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COUNT TOLSTOI’S WORKS. 

ANNA KARENINA.$1.75 

CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, AND YOUTH. . 1.50 

IVAN ILYITCH. 1.25 

MY RELIGION. 1.00 

MY CONFESSION.1.00 

WHAT TO DO?.1.25 

THE INVADERS.1.25 

A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR.1.50 

NAPOLEON’S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN . . . 1.00 

THE LONG EXILE . ..1.25 

LIFE. 1.25 

SEVASTOPOL.. . . . 1.00 

THE COSSACKS. 1.00 

POWER AND LIBERTY . . ..75 

WHAT MEN LIVE BY (booklet) .30 

THE TWO PILGRIMS (booklet) .30 

WHERE LOVE IS (booklet) .30 


THOMAS Y. CROWELL &. CO., 

PUBLISHERS, 

13 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 






















W HA T TO DO? 


THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS 
OF MOSCOW 


BY 

COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOI 

n 


A NEW AND AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE 
UNABRIDGED RUSSIAN MANUSCRIPT 


OFCO/ vq^S 

copyright 

NOV 17IBP8^ 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 


13 Astor Place 




si/ 





HN 526 



Copyright, 1888, 

By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO 





INTRODUCTION. 


Great social questions face us. They are rising like 
ominous storm-clouds above the horizon, not only in what 
are sometimes called the u effete monarchies ” of the Old 
World, but here in this New World, in this favored land. 
Thoughtful men and women are everywhere busying them¬ 
selves with their solution. 

Side by side with the portentous increase of wealth, is the 
more portentous increase of destitution and crime. On the 
one side, unheard-of luxury ; on the other, desperate poverty. 
On the one side, pride and idleness ; on the other, beggary 
and anarchy. There are warnings in history, — two mighty 
warnings, —the fall of Rome, the French Revolution. Rome 
sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. The French 
aristocracy cried, “ Apr&s nous le cUluge but the deluge 
came while , not after; it was a deluge of blood. 

Modern civilization is sowing the whirlwind: what shall 
we or our children reap? There are enormous wrongs. Can 
they be righted while yet there is time ? How ? 

Various methods have suggested themselves. Some are 
visionary: some would be practicable if men’s eyes were 
opened. 

Who doubts, that, if alcoholic drinks could be banished 
from the earth, the question of poverty aiid crime would be 
practically settled? 

Meanwhile, associated charities rally earnest men and 
women, and home missionaries devote their lives to this 
work. 

iii 



IV 


INTRODUCTION. 


But still the problem grows more ominous. 

A voice from Russia — the voice, as it were, of a prophet 
— has proclaimed another and inexorable way. 

A nobleman, rich and famous, a popular novelist, a great 
land-owner, with every thing in his grasp that ambition might 
suggest, found himself face to face with this question. 

He had lived the idle, luxurious life of “the upper 
classes,” the world over, and thought to compound with his 
conscience by a dilettante system of money-giving. With 
this charitable object in view, he investigated the poverty of 
Moscow, which is exactly like the poverty of every other 
city, — Paris, London, New York, Berlin, Boston, — and 
after systematic examination he came to the conclusion that 
the mere giving of money only added to the existing evil. 

Then the great question took possession of him, — What 
Must We Do ? 

He discovered a solution which he claims to be the solution, 
and he has carried it out in the spirit of Sakya Muni and of 
Christ. 

Absolute renunciation in the line of the text, “Whoso 
loseth his life shall find it.” 

For Count Tolstoi, true life is to be found only in labor — 
bodily labor, mental labor, moral labor, all co-ordinated into 
the one struggle with nature — the struggle for existence in 
which every man must lend a hand to aid his neighbor. 

It is democracy pure and simple. 

It is socialism in its grim and classic but divine features. 

It is organized anarchy, if one may be permitted to use 
such a paradox. No rulers, no armies, no money, no taxes, 
no possessions, no cities, but every man living in accordance 
with the Golden Rule, eating his bread in the sweat of his 
brow ; while art and science, legitimate when removed from 
the realm of private gain, shall serve to educate the people, 
and make them better. 

The story of Count Tolstoi’s great struggle, and of his 


INTRODUCTION . 


V 


arrival at the solution, is told by himself in a series of papers 
collected under the general head “ ]Vhat To Do ? ” or, more 
correctly, “ What Must We Do Then f ” 

The theories presented, and the experiences related, were, 
in some details, too radical for an autocratic country like 
Russia; and the authorized edition of Count Tolstoi’s col¬ 
lected writings, contains only garbled extracts from this 
work. 

The work circulates, however, in Russia, in unpublished 
form ; and a friend and disciple of the Count, having a copy 
in his possession, put it into an English translation, with the 
design that it should be published in America in a form cheap 
enough to reach the masses. Such is the explanation of the 
present edition of “ What To Do?” It will be found in many 
respects different from the translation published last year. 
It is complete and unabridged. 

The reader must not forget that it was written for Russians, 
and that, therefore, it must be judged with reference to Rus¬ 
sian conditions. But no one can read these glowing pages 
without a thrill of admiration for the honesty and manliness 
of the great novelist, who has himself shown his sincerity 
by adopting the manner of life which he holds up as the 
ideal of the world. 

His words are eloquent; they ring often with solemn 
warning; and they are to be read, not for curiosity, as those 
of a fanatic, but for instruction, as the prophecy of a seer. 

N. H. DOLE. 

Boston, Nov. 1, 1888. 


























































% 




















WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


“ And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? 

“ lie answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to 
him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.” (Luke iii. 10, 11.) 

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth 
corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 

“But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust 
doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal : 

“ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

“ The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole 
body shall be full of light. 

“ But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore 
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! 

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the 
other; or else he will hold lo the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God 
and mammon. 

“ Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or 
what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life 
more than meat, and the body than raiment? ” (Matt. vi. 19-25.) 

“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we 
drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 

“ (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Fathei 
knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these 
things shall be added unto you.” (Matt. vi. 31-33.) 

“ For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to 
enter into the kingdom of God.” (Luke xviii. 25.) 


I. 

Having passed the greater part of my life in the country, 
I came at length, in the year 1881 , to reside in Moscow, 
where I was immediately struck with the extreme state of 
pauperism in that city. Though well acquainted with the 
privations of the poor in rural districts, I had not the faintest 
conception of their actual condition in towns. 

In Moscow it is impossible to pass a street without meet¬ 
ing beggars of a peculiar kind quite unlike those in the 

l 



9 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


country, who go about there, as the saying is, “ with a bag 
and the name of Christ.” 

The Moscow beggars neither carry a bag nor ask for alms. 
In most cases when they meet you, they only try to catch 
your eye, and act according to the expression of your 
face. 

I know of one such, a bankrupt gentleman. He is an old 
man, who advances slowly, limping painfully on each leg. 
When he meets you, he limps, and makes a bow. If you 
stop, he takes off his cap, furnished with a cockade, bows 
again, and begs. Tf you do not stop, he pretends only to be 
lame, and continues limping along. 

That is.a specimen of a genuine Moscow beggar, and an 
experienced one. 

At first I did not know why such mendicants did not ask 
openly ; but afterwards I learned why, without understanding 
the reason. 

One day I saw a policeman push a ragged peasant, all 
swollen from dropsy, into a cab. I asked what he had been 
doing, and the policeman replied, — 

“ Begging.” 

©© © 

“Is begging, then, forbidden?” 

“So it seems,” he answered. As the man was being 
driven away, I took another cab, and followed. I wished to 
find out whether mendicancy was really forbidden, and if so, 
why it was? I could not at all understand how it was pos¬ 
sible to forbid one man asking something from another ; and, 
moreover, I had my doubts whether it was illegal in a city 
where it flourished to such an extent. 

I entered the police-station where the pauper had been 
taken, and asked an official armed with sword and pistol, 
and seated at a table, what he had been arrested for. 

The man looked up at me sharply, and said, “ What 
business is that of yours? ” 

How r ever, feeling the necessity of some explanation, he 
added, “ The authorities order such fellows to be arrested, 
so I suppose it is necessary.” 

I went away. The policeman who had brought the man 
was sitting in the window of the ante-room, stud}ing his 
note-book. I said to him,— 

“Is it really true that poor people are not allowed to ask 
for alms in Christ’s name? ” 

The man started, as if waking up from a sleep, stared at 


WHAT MUST WE BO THENf 


8 


me, then relapsed again into a state of stolid indifference, 
and, reseating himself on the window-sill, said,— 

“ The authorities require it, so you see it is necessary.” 

And as he became again absorbed in his note-book, I went 
down the steps towards my cab. 

“Well! have they locked him up?” asked the cabman. 
He had evidently become interested in the matter. 

“ They have,” I answered. He shook his head. 

“ Is begging, then, forbidden here in Moscow? ” I asked. 

“ I can’t tell you,” he said. 

“ How,” I said, “ can a man be locked up, for begging in 
the name of Christ? ” 

“Nowadays things have changed, and you see it is for¬ 
bidden,” he answered. 

Since that time, I have seen policemen several times taking 
paupers to the police-station, and thence to the work-house : 
indeed, I once met a whole crowd of these poor creatures, 
about thirty, escorted before and behind by policemen. I 
asked what they had been doing. 

“ Begging,” was the reply. 

It appears that, according to law, medicancy is forbidden 
in Moscow, notwithstanding the great number of beggars 
one meets there in every street, whole rows of them near the 
churches during service-time, and most of all at funerals. 
But why are some caught and locked up, while others are 
let alone? This I have not been able to solve. Either 
there are lawful and unlawful beggars amongst them, or else 
there are so many that it is impossible to catch them all; 
or, perhaps, though some are taken up, others fill their 
places. 

There are a great variety of such mendicants in Moscow. 
There are those that make a living by begging. There are 
also honestly destitute people, such as have somehow 
chanced to reach Moscow, and are really in extreme 
need. 

Amongst these last are men and women evidently from the 
country. I have often met such. Some of them who had 
fallen ill, and afterward recovered and left the hospital, 
could now find no means, either of feeding themselves, or of 
getting away from Moscow ; some of them, besides, had taken 
to drink (such probably was the case of the man with dropsy 
whom I met) ; some were in good health, but had been 
burned out of house and home, or else were very old, or were 


4 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


widowed or deserted women with children ; some others were 
sound as to health, and quite capable of working. 

These robust fellows especially interested me, — the more 
so, because, since my arrival in Moscow, I had, for the sake 
of exercise, contracted the habit of going to the Sparrow 
Hills, and working there with two peasants, who sawed wood. 
These men were exactly like the beggars wiiom I often met 
in the streets. One was called Peter, and was an ex-soldier 
from Kaluga; the other, Simon, from Vladimir. They pos¬ 
sessed nothing save the clothes on their backs: and they 
earned, by working very hard, from forty to forty-five 
kopeks a day ; out of this they both put a little aside, — the 
Kaluga soldier, in order to buy a fur coat; the Vladimir 
peasant, in order to get money enough to return to his home 
in the country. 

Meeting, therefore, in the streets similar individuals, I was 
particularly interested in them, and failed to understand why 
some begged whilst others worked. 

Whenever I met a beggar of this description, I used to ask 
him how it was that he had come to such a state. Once 
I met a strong, healthy-looking peasant: he asked alms. I 
questioned him as to who he yvas, and whence he had come. 

Pie told me he had come from Kaluga, in search of work. 
He had at first found some, such as sawing old timber into 
fire-wood ; but after he and his companion had finished the 
job, though they had continually looked for more work, 
they had not found any ; his companion had left him, and he 
himself had passed a fortnight in the utmost need, and, hav¬ 
ing sold all he possessed to obtain food, had not now enough, 
even to buy the tools necessary for sawing. 

I gave him the money for a saw, and told him where to go 
for work. I had previously arranged with Peter and Simon 
that they should accept a new fellow-worker, and find him a 
companion. 

“ Be sure you come ! There is plenty of work to be done,” 
I said on parting. 

“You may depend on me,” he answered. “Do you 
think there can be any pleasure in knocking about, begging, 
if I could work?” 

The man solemnly promised that he would come; and he 
seemed to be honest, and really meaning to work. 

Next day, on coming to my friends, Peter and Simon, I 
asked them whether the man had arrived. They said he had 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


not; nor, indeed, did he come at all: and in this way I was 
frequently deceived. 

I have also been deceived by those who stated that they 
only wanted a little money to buy a ticket, in order to return 
home, and whom I again met in the streets a few days later. 
Many of them I came to know well, and they knew me; 
though occasionally, having forgotten me, they would repeat 
the same false tale ; but sometimes they would turn away on 
recognizing me. 

In this way I discovered, that, even in this class of men, 
there are many rogues. 

But still, these poor rogues were also very much to be 
pitied: they were all of thehi ragged, hungry paupers ; they 
are of the sort who die of cold in the streets, or hang them¬ 
selves to escape living, as the papers frequently tell us. 


II. 

When I talked to my town friends about this pauperism 
which surrounded them, they always replied, “ Oh ! you have 
seen nothing yet! You should go to the Khitrof Market, 
and visit the lodging-houses there, if you want to see the 
genuine 4 Golden Company.’ ” 

One jovial friend of mine added, that the number of these 
paupers had so increased, that' they already formed, not a 
“ Golden Company,” but a “ Golden Regiment.” 

My lively friend was right; but he would have been yet 
nearer the truth had he said that these men formed, in 
Moscow, not a company, nor a regiment, but a whole army, 
— an army, I should judge, of about fifty thousand. 

The regular townspeople, when they spoke to me about 
the pauperism of the city, always seemed to feel a certain 
pleasure or pride in being able to give me such precise 
information. 

I remember I noticed, when visiting London, that the 
citizens there seemed also to find a certain satisfaction in 
telling me about London destitution, as though it were some¬ 
thing to be proud of. 

However, wishing to inspect this poverty about which I 
had heard so much, I turned my steps very ofCen towards 
the Khitrof Market; but, on each occasion, I felt a sensation 
of pain and shame. “ Why should you go to look at the 


6 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


suffering of human beings whom you cannot help? ” said one 
voice within me. u If you live here, and see all that is 
pleasant in town life, go and see also what is wretched,” 
replied another. 

And so, one cold, windy day in December, two years 
ago, I went to the Khitrof Market, the centre of the town 
pauperism. 

It was on a week-day, about four in the afternoon. While 
still a good distance off, I noticed greater and greater num¬ 
bers of men in strange garb, evidently not originally meant 
for them ; and in yet stranger foot-apparel, men of a peculiar 
unhealthy complexion, and all apparently showing a remark¬ 
able indifference to all that surrounded them. 

Men in the strangest, most incongruous costumes saun¬ 
tered along, evident!}' without the least thought as to how 
they might look in the eyes of others. They were all going 
in the same direction. Without asking the way, which was 
unknown to me, I followed them, and came to the Khitrof 
Market. 

There I found women likewise in ragged capes, rough¬ 
looking cloaks, jackets, boots, and goloshes. Perfectly free 
and easy in their manner, notwithstanding the grotesque 
monstrosity of their attire, these women, old and young, were 
sitting, bargaining, strolling about, and abusing one another. 

Market-time having evidently passed, there were not 
many people there ; and as most of them were going up-hill, 
through the market-place, and all in the same direction, I 
followed them. 

The farther I went, the greater became the stream of 
people flowing into the one road. Having passed the mar¬ 
ket, and gone up the street, I found that I was following two 
women, one old, the other young. Both were clothed in 
some gray ragged stuff. They were talking, as they walked, 
about some kind of business. 

Ever}' expression was unfailingly accompanied by some 
obscene word. They were neither of them drunk, but were 
absorbed with their own affairs; and the men passing, and 
those about them, paid not the slightest attention to their 
language, which sounded so strange to me. It appeared to 
be the generally accepted manner of speech in those parts. 
On the left we passed some private night-lodging-houses, 
and some of the crowd entered them : others continued to 
ascend the hill towards a large corner house. The majority 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


7 


of the people walking along with me went into this house. 
In front of it, people all of the same sort were standing and 
sitting, on the sidewalk and in the snow. 

At the right of the entrance were women ; at the left, men. 
I passed by the men : 1 passed by the women (there were 
several hundreds in all), and stopped where the crowd 
ceased. 

This building was the “ Liapin free night-lodging-house.” 
The crowd was composed of night-lodgers, waiting to be let 
in. At five o’clock in the evening this house is opened aud 
the crowd admitted. Hither came almost all the people whom 
I followed. 

I remained standing where the file of men ended. Those 
nearest to me stared at me till I had to look at them. The 
remnants of garments covering their bodies were very 
various; but the one expression of the eyes of all alike 
seemed to be, “ Why have you, a man from another world, 
stopped here with us? Who are you? Are you a self- 
satisfied man of wealth, desiring to be gladdened by the sight 
of our need, to divert 3 ’ourself in your idleness, and to mock 
at us ? or are you that which does not and can not exist, — 
a man who pities us ? ” 

On all their faces the same question was written. Each 
would look at me, meet my eyes, and turn away again. 

I wanted to speak to some one of them, but for a long 
time I could not summon up courage. However, eventually 
our mutual exchange of glances introduced us to each other ; 
and we felt that, however widely separated were our social 
positions in life, after all we were fellow-men, and so ceased 
to be afraid of one another. 

Next to me stood a peasant with a swollen face, and red 
beard, in a ragged jacket, and worn-out goloshes on his 
naked feet, though there were eight degrees of frost . 1 For 
the third or fourth time our eyes met; and I felt so drawn 
to him that I was no longer ashamed to address him (to have 
refrained from doing so would have been the only real 
shame), and asked him where he came from. 

He answered eagerly, while a crowd began to collect round 
us, that he had come from Smolensk in search of work, in 
order to be able to buy bread, and pay his taxes. 

“ There is no work to be had nowadays,” he said: “the 
soldiers have got hold of it all. So here am I knocking 

1 Reaumur. 


8 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


about; and God is my witness, I have not had any thing to 
eat for two day’s.” 

He said this sliydy, with an attempt at a smile. A seller 1 
of warm drinks, ail old soldier, w’as standing near. I called 
him, and made him pour out a glass for him. The peasant 
took the warm vessel in his hands, and, before drinking, 
warmed them against the glass, trying not to lose any T of the 
precious heat; and whilst doing this he related to me his 
story. 

The adventures of these people, or at least the stories 
which they tell, are almost always the same : He had had 
a little work ; then it had ceased : and here, in the night-lodg¬ 
ing-house, his purse, containing his money and passport, had 
been stolen from him. Now he could not leave Moscow. 

He told me that during the day he warmed himself in 
public-houses, eating any stale crust of bread which might 
be given him. His night’s lodging here in Liapin’s house 
cost him nothing. 

He was only waiting for the round of the police-sergeant 
to lock him up for being without his passport, when he would 
be sent on foot, with a party of men similarly situated, to 
the place of his birth. 

“They say the inspection will take place on Thursday, 
when I shall be taken up ; so I must try and keep on until 
then.” (The prison and his compulsory journey’ appeared 
to him as the “ promised land.”) While he was speaking, 
two or three men in the crowd said they were also in exactly 
the same situation. 

A thin, pale youth, with a long nose, only a shirt upon his 
back, and that torn about the shoulders, and a tattered cap 
on his head, edged his way to me through the crowd. He 
was shivering violently all the time, but tried, as he caught 
my eye, to smile scornfully at the peasant’s talk, thinking 
thus to show his superiority. 

I offered him some drink. 

He warmed his hands on the tumbler as the other had done ; 
but just as he began to speak, he was shouldered aside by 
a big, black, hook-nosed, bare-headed fellow, in a thin shirt 
and waistcoat, who also asked for some drink. 

Then a tall old man, with a thin beard, in an overcoat 
fastened round the waist with a cord, and in matting-shoes, 
had some. He was drunk. 

1 A sbiten-seller: sbiten is a hot drink made of herbs or spices and molasses. 


WHA T MUST WE DO THEN / 


9 


Then came a little man, with a swollen face and teary eyes, 
in a coarse brown jacket, and with knees protruding through 
his torn trousers, and knocking against each other with cold. 
He shivered so that he could not hold the glass, and spilled 
the contents over his clothes: the others took to abusing 
him, but he only grinned miserably, and shivered. 

After him came an ugly, deformed man in rags, and with 
bare feet. Then an individual of the officer type; another 
belonging to the church class ; them a strange-looking being 
without a nose, — and all of them hungry, cold, suppliant, and 
humble, — crowded round me, and stretched out their hands 
for the glass ; but the drink was exhausted. Then one man 
asked for money : I gave him some. A second and a third 
followed, till the whole crowd pressed on me. In the general 
confusion the gatekeeper of the neighboring house shouted 
to the crowd to clear the pavement before his house, and the 
people submissively obeyed. 

Some of them undertook to control the tumult, and took 
me under their protection. They attempted to drag me out 
of the crush. But the crowd that formerly had lined the 
pavement in a long file, now had become condensed about 
me. Every one looked at me and begged ; and it seemed as 
if each face were more pitiful, harassed, and degraded than 
the other. I distributed all the money I had,—only about 
twenty rubles,—and entered the lodging-house with the 
crowd. The house was enormous, and consisted of four parts. 
In the upper stories were the men’s rooms; on the ground- 
floor the women’s. I went first into the women’s dormitory, 
— a large room, filled with beds resembling the berths in a 
third-class railway-carriage. They were arranged in two 
tiers, one above the other. 

Strange-looking women in ragged dresses, without jackets, 
old and young, kept coming in and occupying places, some 
below, others climbing above. Some of the elder ones 
crossed themselves, pronouncing the name of the founder of 
the refuge. Some laughed and swore. 

I went up-stairs. There, in a similar wa}% the men had 
taken their places. Amongst them I recognized one of those 
to whom I had given money. On seeing him I suddenly felt 
horribly ashamed, and made haste to leave. 

And with a sense of having committed some crime, I 
returned home. There I entered along the carpeted steps 
into the rug-covered hall, and, having taken off my fur coat, 


10 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


sat down to a meal of five courses, served by two footmen in 
livery, with white ties and white gloves. And a scene of the 
past came suddenly before me. Thirty years ago I saw 
a man’s head cut off under the guillotine in Paris before a 
crowd of thousands of spectators. I was aware that the 
man had been a great criminal: I was acquainted with all 
the arguments in justification of capital punishment for such 
offences. I saw this execution carried out deliberately : but 
at the moment that the head and body were severed from 
each other by the keen blade, I gasped, and realized in every 
fibre of my being, that all the arguments which 1 had hitherto 
heard upon capital punishment were wickedly false ; that, no 
matter how many might agree as to its being a lawful act, it 
was literally murder; whatever other title men might give 
it, they thus had virtually committed murder, that worst of all 
crimes: and there was I, both by my silence and my non¬ 
interference, an aider, abetter, and participator in the sin. 

Similar convictions were now again forced upon me when 
I beheld the misery, cold, hunger, and humiliation of thou¬ 
sands of my fellow-men. I realized not only with my brain, 
but in every pulse of my soul, that, whilst there were thou¬ 
sands of such sufferers in Moscow, I, with teus of thousands 
of others, filled myself daily to repletion with luxurious 
dainties of every description, took the tenderest care of my 
horses, and clothed my very floors with velvet carpets! 

Whatever the wise and learned of the world might say 
about it, however unalterable the course of life might seem to 
be, the same evil was continually being enacted, and I, by my 
own personal habits of luxury, w r as a promoter of that evil. 

The difference between the two cases was only this: that 
in the first, all I could have done would have been to shout 
out to the murderers standing near the guillotine, who were 
accomplishing the deed, that they were committing a murder, 
though of course knowing that my interference would have 
been in vain. Whereas, in this second case, I might have 
given away, not only the drink and the small sum of money I 
had with me, but also the coat from off my shoulders, and 
all that I possessed at home. Yet I had not done so, 
and therefore felt, and feel, and can never cease to feel, 
myself a partaker in a crime which is continually being com¬ 
mitted, so long as I have superfluous food whilst others have 
none, so long as 1 have tw r o coats whilst there exists one 
man without any. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


11 


III. 

On the same evening that I returned from Liapin’s house, 
I imparted my impressions to a friend : and he, a resident of 
the town, began to explain to me, not without a certain 
satisfaction, that this was the most natural state of things in 
a town ; that it was only owing to my provincialism that I 
found any thing remarkable in it; and that it had ever 
been, and ever would be, so, such being one of the 
inevitable conditions of civilization. In London it was. 
yet worse, . . . therefore there could be nothing wrong 
about it, and there was nothing to be disturbed and troubled 
about. 

I began to argue with my friend, but with such warmth 
and so angrily, that my wife rushed in from the adjoining 
room to ask what had happened. It appeared that I had, 
without being aware of it, shouted out in an agonized voice, 
gesticulating wildly, “ We should not go on living in this 
way! we must not live so! we have no right!” I was 
rebuked for my unnecessary excitement; I was told that I 
could not talk quietly upon any question ; that I was irrita¬ 
ble ; and it was pointed out to me that the existence of such 
misery as I had witnessed, should in no way be a reason 
for embittering the life of my home-circle. 

I felt that this was perfectly just, and held m 3 ' tongue; 
but in the depth of m 3 7 soul I knew that I was right, and I 
could not quiet my 7 conscience. 

The town life, which had previously seemed alien and 
strange to mei became now so hateful that all the indul¬ 
gences of a luxurious existence, in which I had formerly 
delighted, now served to torment me. 

However much I tried to find some kind of excuse for my 
mode of life, I could not contemplate without irritation 
either m\ T own or other people’s drawing-rooms, nor a clean,, 
richly served dinner-table, nor a carriage with well-fed 
coachman and horses, nor the shops, theatres, and enter¬ 
tainments. I could not help seeing, in contrast with all this, 
those hungry, shivering, and degraded inhabitants of the 
night-lodging-house. And I could never free myself from 
the thought that these two conditions were inseparable — 
that the one proceeded from the other. I remember that the 
sense of culpability which I had felt from the first moment 


12 


WIT A T MUST WE DO THEN? 


never left me; but with this feeling another soon became 
mingled, which lessened the first. 

When I talked to my intimate friends and acquaintances 
about my impressions on Liapin’s house, they all answered 
in the same way, and expressed besides their appreciation of 
my kindness and tender-heartedness, and gave me to under¬ 
stand that the sight had so impressed me because I, Leo 
Tolstoi, was kind-hearted and good. And I willingly 
allowed myself to believe it. 

The natural consequence of this .was, that the first keen 
sense of self-reproach and shame was blunted, and was re¬ 
placed by a sense of satisfaction at my own virtue, and a 
desire to make it known to others. “ It is in truth,” I said 
to myself, u probably not my connection with a luxurious 
life which is at fault, but the unavoidable circumstances of 
life. And thus a change in my particular life cannot alter 
the evil which I have seen.” 

In changing my own life, I should only render myself and 
those nearest and dearest to me miserable, whilst that other 
misery would remain the same ; and therefore my object 
should be, not to alter my own way of living, as I had at 
first imagined, but to try as much as was in my power to 
ameliorate the position of those unfortunate ones who had 
excited my compassion. 

The whole matter, I reasoned, lies in the fact that I, being 
an extremely kind and good man, wish to do good to m 3 ' 
fellow-men. And I began to arrange a plan of philanthropic 
activity in which I might exhibit all my virtues. I must, 
however, here remark, that, while planning this charitable 
effort, in the depth of 1113 ' heart I felt that I was not doing 
the right thing; but, as too often happens, reason and im¬ 
agination were stifling the voice of conscience. About this 
tune the census was being taken, and it seemed to me a good 
Opportunity for instituting that charitable organization in 
which I wanted to shine. 

I was acquainted with many philanthropic institutions and 
societies already existing in Moscow, but all their activity 
seemed to me both wrongly directed and insignificant in 
comparison with what I myself wished to do. And this was 
what I invented to excite sympathy amongst the rich people 
for the poor: I began to collect" mone 3 *, and enlist men who 
wished to help in the work, and who would, in company with 
the census officers, visit all the nests of pauperism, entering 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


13 


into relations with the poor, finding out the details of their 
needs, helping them with money and work, sending them out 
of Moscow, placing their children in schools, and their old 
men and women in homes and houses of refuge. 

I thought, moreover, that, from those who undertook this 
work, there could be formed a permanent societ}', which, 
dividing between its members the various districts of Mos¬ 
cow, would take care that new cases of want and misery 
should be avoided, and so by degrees stifie pauperism at its 
very birth, accomplishing their task, not so much by cure, as 
by prevention. 

I already saw in the future, begging and poverty entirely 
disappearing, I having been the means of its accomplishment. 
Then all of us who were rich could go on living in all our 
luxury as before, dwelling in fine houses, eating dinners of 
five courses, driving in our carriages to theatres and enter¬ 
tainments, and no longer being harassed by such sights as I 
had witnessed at Liapin’s house. 

Having invented this plan, I wrote an article about it; and, 
before even giving it to be printed, I went to those acquaint¬ 
ances from whom I hoped to obtain co-operation, and ex¬ 
pounded to all whom I visited that day (chiefly the rich) the 
ideas I afterwards published in my article. 

I proposed to profit by the census in order to study the 
state of pauperism in Moscow, and to help to exterminate it 
by personal effort and money, after which we might all wiih 
a quiet conscience enjoy our usual pleasures. All listened 
to me attentively and seriously; but, in every case, I re¬ 
marked that the moment my hearers came to understand 
what I was driving at, they seemed to become uncomfortable 
and somewhat embarrassed. But it was principally, I feel 
sure, on my accouut; because they considered all that 1 said 
to be folly. It seemed as though some other motive compelled 
my listeners to agree for the moment with my foolishness. 
— “Oh, yes! Certainly. It would be delightful,” they 
said: “of course it is impossible not to sympathize with 
you. Your idea is splendid. I myself have had the same ; 
but . . . people here are so indifferent, that it is hardly rea¬ 
sonable to expect a great success. However, as far as I am 
concerned, I am, of course, ready to share in the enterprise.” 

Similar answers I received from all. They consented, as 
it appeared to me, not because they were persuaded by my 
arguments, nor in compliance with my request, but because 


14 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


of some exterior reason, which rendered it impossible for 
them to refuse. 

I remarked this partly because none of those who promised 
me their help in the form of money, defined the sum they 
meant to give ; so that I had to name the amount by asking, 
“ May I count upon you for twenty-five, or one hundred, or 
two hundred, or three hundred, rubles?” And not one of 
them paid the money. I draw attention to this fact, because, 
when people are going to pa} 7 for what they are anxious to 
have, they are generally in haste to give it. Suppose it were 
to secure a box to see Sarah Bernhardt, the money is imme¬ 
diately produced. Hero, however, of all who agreed to give, 
and expressed their sympathy, no one immediately produced 
the amount, but merely silently acquiesced in the sum 1 hap¬ 
pened to name. 

In the last house I visited that day, there was a large party. 
The mistress of the house had for some years been employed 
in works of charity. Several carriages were waiting at the 
door of the house. Footmen in expensive liveries were 
seated in the hall. In the spacious drawing-room, ladies, 
old and young, wearing rich dresses and ornaments, were 
talking to some young men, and dressing up small dolls, 
destined for a lottery in aid of the poor. 

The sight of this drawing-room, and of the people assem¬ 
bled there, struck me very painfully. For not only was their 
property worth several million rubles ; not only could the 
interest on the capital spent here on dresses, laces, bronzes, 
jewels, carriages, horses, liveries, footmen, exceed a hundred 
times the value of these ladies’ work ; not only was this the 
case, — but even the expenses caused by this very party of 
ladies and gentlemen, the gloves, linen, candles, tea, sugar, 
cakes, all this represented a sum a hundred times exceed¬ 
ing the value of the work done. 

I saw all this, and therefore might have understood that 
here, at all events, I should not find sympathy for my plan ; 
but I had come in order to give an invitation, and, however 
painful it was to me, I said what I wished to say, repeating 
almost the words of my article. 

One lady present offered me some money, adding that, 
owing to her sensibilities, she did not feel strong enough to 
visit the poor herself, but that she would give help in this 
form. How much money, and when she would give it, she 
did not say. Another lady and a young man offered their 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


15 


services in visiting the poor, but I did not profit by their 
offer. The principal person I addressed, told me that it 
would be impossible to do much, because the means were 
not forthcoming. And the means were scarce, because all 
the rich men in Moscow who were known, and could be 
counted upon, had given all it was possible to get from them ; 
their charities having already been rewarded with titles, 
medals, and other distinctions, this being the only effectual 
method of insuring success in the collection of money, — 
namely, to obtain new honors from the authorities, and that 
being very difficult. 

Having returned home, I went to bed, not only with a pre¬ 
sentiment that nothing would result from my idea, but also 
with the shameful consciousness of having, during the whole 
day, been doing something vile and contemptible. However, 
I did not desist. 

First, the work had been begun, and false shame would 
have prevented my giving it up; secondly, not only the 
success of the enterprise itself, but even my occupation in 
it, afforded me the possibility of continuing to live in my 
usual way: whereas, the failure of this enterprise would 
have put me under the constraint of giving up my present 
mode of life, and of seeking another. Of this, I was un¬ 
consciously afraid : therefore, I refused to listen to my inner 
voice, and continued what I had begun. 

Having sent my article to be printed, I read a proof-copy 
at a census-meeting in the town-hall, hesitatingly, and blush¬ 
ing till my cheeks burned again, so uncomfortable did I feel. 

I saw that all my hearers felt equally uncomfortable. 

Upon my question, whether the managers of the census 
would accept my proposal that they should remain at their 
posts in order to form a link between society and those in 
need, an awkward silence ensued. 

Then two of those present made speeches, which seemed 
to mend the awkwardness of my suggestions: sympathy for 
me was expressed along with their general approbation. 
They, however, pointed out the impracticability of my 
scheme. Every one seemed more at ease: but afterwards, 
when, still wishing to succeed, I asked each district man¬ 
ager separately, whether he was willing during the census 
to investigate the needs of the poor, and afterwards remain 
at his post in order to form this link between the poor 
and the rich, all again were confounded; it seemed as 


16 


WHAT MUST )VE DO THEN f 


though their looks said, “Why, out of personal regard for 
you, we have listened to your silly proposition ; but here you 
come out with it again ! ” Such was the expression of their 
faces, but in words they told me that they consented ; and 
two of them, separately, but as though they had agreed 
together, said in the same words, “We regard it as our 
moral duty to do so.” The same impression was produced 
by my words upon the students, who had volunteered to act 
as clerks during the census, when I told them that they might 
then, besides their scientific pursuits, accomplish also a 
charitable work. 

When we talked the matter over, I noticed that they were 
shy of looking me straight in the face, as one often hesitates 
to look into the face of a good-natured man who is talking 
nonsense. The same impression vrns produced by my article 
upon the editor of the paper when I handed it to him ; also 
upon my son, my wife, and various other people. Every one 
seemed embarrassed, but all found it necessary to approve 
of the idea itself; and all, immediately after this approba¬ 
tion, began to express their doubts as to the success of the 
plan, and, for some reason or other (all without exception), 
took to condemning the indifference and coldness of society 
and of the world, though evidently excluding themselves. 

In the depth of my soul, I continued to feel that all this 
was not the right thing, that nothing would come of it; but 
the article had been printed, and I had agreed to take part 
in the census. 1 had put a plan into action, and now the 
plan itself drew me along. 


IV. 

In accordance with my request, the part of the town 
was assigned to me for the census which contained the 
houses generally known under the name of the Rzhanoff 
lodgings. I had long before heard that they were consid¬ 
ered to be the lowest circle of poverty and vice, and that 
was the reason that I asked the officers of the census to 
assign me this district. 

My desire was gratified. 

Having received the appointment from the Town Council, 
I went, a few days before the census, alone, to inspect my 
district. With the help of a plan I was furnished with, I 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


17 


soon found the Rzhanoff Houses, — approached by a street, 
which terminated on the left-hand side of a gloomy building 
without any apparent entrance. From the aspect of this 
house, I guessed it was the one I was in search of. On de¬ 
scending the street, I had come across some boys, from ten 
to fourteen years old, in short coats, sliding down the frozen 
gutter, some on their feet, others upon a single skate. 

The boys w r ere ragged, and, like all town bo};s, sharp and 
bold. I stopped to look at them. An old woman in torn 
clothes, with hanging yellow cheeks, came round the corner. 
She was going up-hill, and, like a horse out of wind, gasped 
painfully at every step ; and, when abreast of me, she stopped 
with hoarse, choking breath. In any other place, this old 
woman would have asked alms of me, but here she only 
began to talk. 

“Just look at them!” she said, pointing to the sliding 
boys; “ always at mischief! They will become the same 
Rzhanoff good-for-nothings as their fathers.” One boy, in 
an overcoat and visorless cap, overhearing her words, stopped. 
“You shut up ! ” he shouted. “You’re only an old Rzhanoff 
goat yourself! ” 

I asked the boy if he lived here. “ Yes, and so does she. 
She stole some boots,” he called out, and, pushing himself 
off, slid on. 

The woman gave vent to a torrent of abuse, interrupted 
by her cough. During this squabble an old white-haired 
man, all in rags, came down the middle of the street, brand¬ 
ishing his arms, and carrying in one hand a bundle of small 
loaves. He seemed to have just fortified himself with a glass 
of liquor. He had evidently heard the old woman’s abuse, 
and took her side. 

“I’ll give it you, you little devils, you!” he cried out, 
pretending to rush after them ; and, having passed behind me, 
he stepped upon the pavement. If you saw this old man in 
a fashionable street, you would be struck with his air of de¬ 
crepitude, feebleness, and poverty. Here he appeared in 
the character of a merry workman, returning from his day’s 
labor. 

I followed him. He turned round the corner to the left 
into an alley ; and, having passed the front of the house and 
the gate, he disappeared through the door of an inn. Into 
this alley the doors of the latter, a public-house, and several 
small eating-houses, opened. It was the Rzhanoff Houses. 


18 


WHAT MUST WE BO THENf 


Every thing was gra}', dirty, and foul-smelling, — buildings, 
lodgings, courts, and people. Most of those I met here were 
in tattered clothes, half naked. Some were passing along, 
others were running from one door to another. Two were 
bargaining about some rags. I went round the whole build¬ 
ing, down another lane and a court, and, having returned, 
stopped at the archway of the Rzhanoff Houses. 

I wanted to go in, and see what was going on inside, but 
the idea made me feel painfully awkward. What should I 
say if the}' asked me what I had come for? 

However, after a little hesitation, I went in. The moment 
I entered the court, I was conscious of a most revolting 
odor. The court was dreadfully dirty. I turned round the 
corner, and at the same instant heard the steps of people 
running along the boards of the gallery, and thence down the 
stairs. 

First a gaunt-looking woman, with tucked-up sleeves, a 
faded pink dress, and shoes on her stockingless feet, rushed 
out; after her, a rough-haired man in a red shirt, and ex¬ 
tremely wide trousers, like a petticoat, and with goloshes on 
his feet. The man caught her under the stairs: “You 
sha’n’t escape me,” he said, laughing. 

“ Just listen to the squint-eyed devil! ” began the woman, 
who was evidently not averse to his attentions; but, having 
caught sight of me, she exclaimed angrih', “ Who are you 
looking for? ” As I did not want any one in particular, I 
felt somewhat confused, and went away. 

This little incident, though by no means remarkable in 
itself, suddenly showed to me the work I was about to under¬ 
take in an entirely new light, especiall}' after what I had 
seen on the other side of the court} r ard, — the scolding 
old woman, the light-hearted old man, and the sliding boys. 
I had meditated doing good to these people by the help of 
the rich men of Moscow. I now realized, for the first time, 
that all these poor unfortunates, whom I had been wishing 
to help, had, besides the time they spent suffering from cold 
and hunger, in waiting to get a lodging, several hours daily 
to get through, and that they must somehow fill up the rest 
of the twenty-four hours of every day, — a whole life, of 
which I had never thought before. I realized now, for the 
first time, that all these people, besides the mere effort to 
find food and shelter from the cold, must live through the 
rest of every day of their life as other people have to do, 


I VII AT MUST I YE DO THEN? 


19 


must get angry at times, and be dull, and try to appear light¬ 
hearted, and be sad or merry. And now, for the first time 
(however strange the confession ma} T sound), I was fully 
aware that the task which I was undertaking could not 
simply consist in feeding and clothing a thousand people 
(just as one might feed a thousand head of sheep, and drive 
them into shelter), but must develop some more essential 
help. And when I considered that each one of these in¬ 
dividuals was just such another man as myself, possessing 
also a past liistor}", with the same passions, temptations, 
and errors, the same thoughts, the same questions to be 
answered, then suddenly the work before me appeared stu¬ 
pendous, and I felt my own utter helplessness ; — but it had 
been begun, and I was resolved to continue it. 


y. 

On the appointed day, the students who were to assist me 
started early in the morning; while I, the instigator, only 
joined them at twelve o’clock. I could not come earlier; as 
I did not get up till ten, after which I had to take some 
coffee, and then smoke for the sake of my digestion. Twelve 
o’clock then found me at the door of the Rzhanoff Houses. 
A policeman showed me a public-house, to which the census- 
clerks referred all those who wished to inquire for them. I 
entered, and found it very dirty and unsavoiy. Here, right 
in front of me, was a counter; to the left a small room, fur¬ 
nished with tables covered with soiled napkins; to the right 
a large room on pillars, containing similar little tables placed 
in the windows and along the walls ; with men here and 
there having tea, some very ragged, others well dressed, ap¬ 
parently workmen or small shopkeepers. There were also 
several women. In spite of the dirt, it was easy to see, by 
the business air of the man in charge, and the ready, obliging 
manners of the waiters, that the eating-house was driving a 
good trade. I had no sooner entered than one of the waiters 
was already preparing to assist me in getting off my over¬ 
coat, and anxious to take my orders, showing that evidently 
the people here were in the *habit of doing their work quickly 
and readily. 

My inquiry for the census-clerks was answered by a call 
for “V&nya” from a little man dressed in foreign fashion, 


20 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


who was arranging something in a cupboard behind the 
counter. This was the proprietor of the public-house, a 
peasant from Kaluga, Iv&n Fedotitch by name, who also 
rented half of the other houses, sub-letting the rooms to 
lodgers. In answer to his call, a thin, sallow-faced, hook¬ 
nosed lad, of some eighteen years, came forward hastily ; and 
the landlord said, “ Take this gentleman to the clerks: they 
have gone to the main body of the building over the well.” 

The lad put down his napkin, pulled a coat on over his 
white shirt and trousers, picked up a large cap, then, with 
quick, short steps, he led the way by a back-door through the 
buildings. At the entrance of a greasy, malodorous kitchen, 
we met an old woman, who was carefully carrying in a rag 
some putrid tripe. We descended into a court* built up all 
round with wooden buildings on stone foundations. The 
smell was most offensive, and seemed to be concentrated in a 
privy, to which numbers of people were constantly resorting. 
This awful cesspool forced itself upon one’s notice by the 
pestilential atmosphere around it. 

The boy, taking care not to soil his white trousers, led me 
cautiously across frozen and unfrozen filth, and approached 
one of the buildings. The people crossing the yard and 
galleries all stopped to gaze at me. It was evident that a 
cleanly-dressed man was an unusual sight in the place. 

The boy asked a woman whom we met, whether she had 
seen where the census officials had entered, and three people 
at once answered his question: some said that the}- were 
over the well : others said that they had been there, but had 
now gone to Nikita Ivanovitch’s. 

An old man in the middle of the court, who had only a 
shirt on, said that they were at No. 30. The boy concluded 
that this information was the most probable, and led me to 
No. 30, into the basement, where darkness and a bad smell, 
different from that which filled the court, prevailed. 

We continued to descend along a dark passage. As we 
were traversing it, a door was suddenly opened; and out of 
it came a drunken old man in a shirt, evidently not of the 
peasant class. A shrieking washerwoman, with tucked-up 
sleeves and soapy arms, was pushing him out of the room. 
“Vanya” (my guide) shoved him aside, saying, “ It won’t 
do to kick up such a row here — and you an officer too! ” 

When we arrived at No. 30, V&nya pulled the door, which 
opened with the sound of a wet slap ; and we felt a gush of 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


21 


soapy steam, and an odor of bad food and tobacco, and en¬ 
tered into complete darkness. The windows were on the other 
side ; and we were in a crooked corridor, that went right and 
left, and with doors leading, at different angles, into rooms 
separated from it by a partition of unevenly laid boards, 
roughly whitewashed. 

In a dark room to the left we could see a woman washing 
at a trough. Another old woman was looking out of a door 
at the right. Near an open door was a hairy, red-skinned 
peasant in bark shoes, sitting on a couch. IIis hands rested 
upon his knees ; and he was swinging his feet, and looking 
sadly at his shoes. 

At the end of the passage was a small door leading into 
the room where the census officers w r ere assembled. This 
was the room of the landlady of the whole of No. 30. She 
rented the apartment from Iv&n Fedotitch, and sub-let the 
rooms to ordinary or night lodgers. 

In this tiny room a student sat under an image glittering 
with gilt paper, and, with the air of a magistrate, was put¬ 
ting questions to a man dressed in shirt and vest. This last 
was a friend of the landlady’s, who was answering the ques¬ 
tions in her stead. The landlady herself, — an old woman, 
— and two inquisitive lodgers, were also present. 

When I entered, the room was quite filled up. I pushed 
through to the table, shook hands with the student, aud he 
went on extracting his information; while I studied the 
inhabitants, and put questions to them for my own ends. 

It appeared, however, I could find no one here upon whom 
to bestow my benevolence. The landlady of the rooms, 
notwithstanding their wretchedness and filth (which espe¬ 
cially struck me in comparison with the mansion in which I 
lived), was well off, even from the point of view of town 
poverty; and compared with the country destitution, with 
wdiich I was well acquainted, she lived luxuriously. She 
had a feather-bed, a quilted blanket, a samov&r, a fur cloak, 
a cupboard, with dishes, plates, etc. The landlady’s friend 
had the same well-to-do appearance, and boasted even a 
watch and chain. The lodgers were poor, but among them 
there was no one requiring immediate help. 

Three only applied for aid, — the woman washing linen, 
who said she had been abandoned by her husband; an old 
widowed woman, without means of livelihood; and the 
peasant in the ragged shoes, who told me he had not had 


99 


WHAT MUST WE HO THENf 


any thing to eat that day. But, upon gathering more precise 
information, it became evident that all these people were not 
in extreme want, and that, in order really to help, it would be 
necessary to become more intimately acquainted with them. 

When I ottered the washerwoman to place her children in a 
“home,” she became confused, thought over it some time, 
then thanked me much, but evidently did not desire it: she 
wished rather to be given some money. Her eldest daugh¬ 
ter helped her in the washing, and the second acted as nurse 
to the little boy. 

The old woman asked to be put into a refuge; but, upon 
examining her corner, I saw that she was not in dire distress. 
She had a box containing her property: she had a teapot, 
two cups, and old bonbon-boxes with tea and sugar. She 
knitted stockings and gloves, and received a monthly allow¬ 
ance from a lady benefactress. 

The peasant was evidently more desirous of wetting his 
throat after his last day’s drunkenness than of food, and 
any thing given him would have gone to the public-house. 
In these rooms, therefore, there was no one whom I could 
have rendered in any respect happier by helping them with 
money. 

There were only paupers there, —and paupers, it seemed 
to me, of a questionable kind. 

I put down the names of the old woman, the laundress, 
and the peasant, and settled in my mind that it would be ne¬ 
cessary to do something for them, but that first I should aid 
those other especially unfortunate ones whom I expected to 
come across in this house. I made up my mind that some 
system was necessary in distributing the aid which we had 
to give: first, we should find the most needy, and then come 
to such as these. 

But in the next lodging, and in the next again, I found only 
similar cases, which would have to be looked into more closely 
before being helped. Of those whom pecuniary aid alone 
would have rendered happy, I found none. 

However ashamed I feel in confessing it, I began to 
experience a certain disappointment at not finding in these 
houses any thing resembling what I had expected. 1 thought 
to find very exceptional people ; but, when I had gone over 
all the lodgings, I became convinced that their inhabitants 
were in no way extremely peculiar, but much like those 
amongst whom I lived. 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN/ 


23 


As with us, so also with them, there were some more or 
less good, and others more or less bad: there were some 
more or less happy, and others more or less unhappy. Those 
who were unhappy amongst them would have been equally 
wretched with us, their misery being within themselves, — a 
misery not to be mended by any kind of bank-note. 


VI. 

The inhabitants of these houses belonged to the lowest 
population of the town, which in Moscow amounts to per¬ 
haps more than a hundred thousand. In this house, there 
were representative men of all kinds,—petty employers 
and journeymen, shoemakers, brushmakers, joiners, hackney 
coachmen, jobbers carrying on business on their own account, 
washerwomen, second-hand dealers, money-lenders, day-la¬ 
borers, and others without any definite occupation : here also 
lodged beggars and women of the town. 

Many like those whom I had seen waiting in front of 
Liapin’s house lived here, but they were mixed up with the 
working-people ; and, besides, those whom I then saw were in 
a most wretched condition, when, having eaten and drunk 
all they had, they were turned out of the public-house, and, 
cold and hungry, were waiting, as for heaventy manna, to be 
admitted into the free night-lodging-house,—day by day 
longing to be taken to prison, in order to be sent back to 
their respective homes. Here I saw the same men among 
a greater number of working-people, and at a time, when, 
by some means or other, they had got a few farthings to pay 
for their night’s lodging, and perhaps a ruble or two for 
food and drink. 

However strange it may sound, I had no such feelings here 
as I experienced in Liapin’s house ; but, on the contrary, dur¬ 
ing my first visiting-round, I and the students had a sensa¬ 
tion which was rather agreeable than otherwise. I might 
even say it was entirety agreeable. 

My first impression was, that the majority of those lodging 
here were workingmen, and very kindly disposed. We found 
most of the lodgers at w r ork, — the washerwomen at their tubs, 
the joiners by their benches, the bootmakers at their lasts. 
■The tiny rooms were full of people, and the work was going 
on cheerfully and with energy. There was a smell of per- 


•24 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


spiration among the workmen, of leather at the bootmaker’s, 
of chips in the carpenter’s shop. We often heard songs, 
and saw bare, sinewy arms working briskly and skilfully. 

Everywhere we were received kindly and cheerfully. 
Nearly everywhere our intrusion into the daily life of these 
people excited in them no desire to show us their impor¬ 
tance., or to rate us soundly, as happens when such visits 
are paid to the lodgings of well-to-do people. On the con¬ 
trary, all our questions were answered respectfully without 
any particular importance being attached to them, — served, 
incleed, only as an excuse for them to be merry, and to joke 
as to how they were to be enrolled on the list; how such a 
one was as good as two, and how two others ought to be reck¬ 
oned as one. 

Many we found at dinner or at tea ; and each time, in answer 
to our greeting, “Bread and salt,” or, “Tea and sugar,” 
they said, “ You are welcome ; ” and some even made room 
for us to sit down. Instead of the place being the resort of 
an ever-shifting population, such as we expected to find here, 
it turned out that in this house were many rooms which had 
been tenanted by the same people for long periods. 

One carpenter, with his workmen, and a bootmaker, with 
his journeymen, had been living here for ten years. The boot¬ 
maker’s shop was very dirty and quite choked up, but all his 
men were working very cheerily. I tried to talk with one 
of the workmen, wishing to sound him about the miseries 
of his lot, what he owed to the master, and so forth ; but he 
did not understand me, and spoke of his master and of his 
life from a very favorable point of view. 

In one lodging, there lived an old man with his old wife. 
They dealt in apples. Their room was warm, clean, and 
filled with their belongings. The floor was covered w r ith 
matting made of apple-sacks. There were chests, a cup¬ 
board, a samovfir, and crockery. In the corner were many 
holy images, before which two lamps were burning: on the 
wall hung fur cloaks wrapped up in a sheet. The old woman 
with wrinkled face, kind and talkative, was apparently her¬ 
self delighted with her quiet, respectable life. 

I Win Fedotitch, the owner of the inn and of the lodgings, 
came out, and walked with us. He joked kindly with many 
of the lodgers, calling them all by their names, and giving 
us short sketches of their characters. They were as other, 
men? did. not consider themselves unhappy, but believed 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


25 


they were like every one else, as in reality they were. We 
were prepared to see only dreadful things, and we met instead 
objects not only not repulsive, but estimable. And there 
were so many of them, compared with the ragged, ruined, 
unoccupied people we met now and then among them, that 
the latter did not in the least destroy the general impression. 
To the students it did not appear so remarkable as it did to 
me. They were merely performing an act, as they thought, 
useful to science, and, in passing, made casual observations: 
but I was a benefactor; my object in going there was to help 
the unhappy, ruined, depraved men and women whom I had 
expected to meet in this house. And suddenly, instead of 
unhappy, ruined, depraved beings, I found the majority to 
be workingmen, quiet, satisfied, cheerful, kind, and very 
good. 

I was still more strongly impressed when I found that in 
these lodgings the ciying want I wished to relieve had 
already been relieved before I came. But by whom? By 
these same unhappy, depraved beings whom I was prepared 
to save; and this help was given in a way not open to me. 

In one cellar lay a lonely old man suffering from typhus- 
fever. He had no connections in the world ; yet a woman,— 
a widow with a little girl, — quite a stranger to him, but liv¬ 
ing in the corner next to him, nursed him, and gave him tea, 
and bought him medicine with her own money. 

In another lodging lay a woman in puerperal fever. A 
woman of the town was nursing her child, and had prepared 
a sucking-bottle for him, and had not gone out to ply her sad 
trade for two days. 

An orphan girl was taken into the family of a tailor, who 
had three children of his own. Thus, there remained only 
such miserable unoccupied men as retired officials, clerks, 
men-servants out of situations, beggars, tipsy people, pros¬ 
titutes, children, whom it was not possible to help all at once 
by means of money, but whose cases it was necessary to 
consider carefully before assisting them. I had been seek¬ 
ing for men suffering from want of means, whom one might 
be able to help by sharing one’s superfluities with them. I 
had not found them. All those I had seen, it would have 
been very difficult to assist materially without devoting time 
and care to them. 


26 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


VII. 

These unfortunate people ranged themselves in my mind 
under.three heads: first, those who had lost former advan¬ 
tageous positions, and who were waiting to return to them 
(such men belonged to the lowest as well as to the highest 
classes of society) ; secondly, women of the town, who are 
very numerous in these houses ; and thirdly, children. 

The majority of those I found, and noted down, were 
men who had lost former places, and were desirous of 
returning to them. Such men were also numerous, being 
chiefly of the better class, and government officials. In 
almost all the lodgings we entered with the landlord, we 
were told, “Here we need not trouble to fill up the resi¬ 
dential card ourselves: there is a man here who is able to 
do it, provided he is not tipsy.” 

And Ivan Fedotitch would call by name some such indi¬ 
vidual, who always belonged to this class of ruined people 
of a higher grade. When thus summoned, the man, if he 
were not tipsy, was always willing to undertake the task: 
he kept nodding his head with a sense of importance, knitted 
his brows, inserted now and then learned terms in his 
remarks, and carefully holding in his dirty, trembling hands 
the neat pink card, looked round at his fellow-lodgers with 
pride and contempt, as if he were now, by the superiority of 
his education, triumphing over those who had been continu¬ 
ally humbling him. 

He was evidently pleased with having intercourse with the 
world which used pink cards, with a world of which he him¬ 
self had once been a member. 

To my questions about his life, this kind of man not only 
replied willingly, but with enthusiasm, — beginning to tell a 
story, fixed in his mind like a prayer, about all kinds of 
misfortunes which had happened to him, and chiefly about 
his former position, in which, considering his education, he 
ought to have remained. 

Many such people are scattered about in all the tenements 
of the Rzhanoff Houses. One lodging-house was tenanted 
exclusively by them, women and men. As we approached 
them, Iv&n Fedotitch said, “ Now, here’s where the nobility 
live.” 

The lodging was full: almost all the lodgers — about forty 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


27 


persons — were at home. In the whole house, there were no 
faces so ruined and degraded-looking as these, — if old, 
flabby ; if young, pale and haggard. 

I talked with several of them. Almost always the same 
story was told, only in different degrees of development. 
One and all had been once rich, or had still a rich father or 
brother or uncle; or either his father or the unfortunate him¬ 
self had held a high office. Then came some misfortune 
caused by envious enemies or his own imprudent kindness, 
or some out-of-the-way occurrence ; and, having lost every 
thing, he was obliged to descend to these strange and hate¬ 
ful surroundings, among lice and rags, in company with 
drunkards and loose characters, feeding upon bread and 
liver, and subsisting by beggary. 

All the.thoughts, desires, and recollections of these men 
are turned toward the past. The present appears to them 
as something unnatural, hideous, and unworthy of attention. 
The present does not exist for them. They have only recol¬ 
lections of the past, and expectations of the future, which 
may be realized at any moment, and for the attainment of 
which but very little is needed ; but, unfortunately, this little - 
is out of their reach ; it cannot be got anywhere: and so they 
perish needlessly, one sooner, another later. 

One needs only to be dressed respectably, in order to call 
on a well-known person who is kindly disposed toward him ; 
another requires only to be dressed, have his debts paid, and 
go to some town or other ; a third wants to take his effects out 
of pawn, and get a small sum to carry on a law-suit, which' 
must be decided in his favor, and then all will be well again. 
All say that they have need of some external circumstance 
in order to regain that position which they think natural and 
happy for them. 

If I had not been blinded by my pride in being a bene¬ 
factor, I should have needed only to look a little closer 
into their faces, young and old, which were generally weak, 
sensual, but kind, in order to understand that their misfor¬ 
tunes could not be met by exterior means ; that they could 
be happy in no situation, while their present conception of 
life remained the same ; that they were by no means peculiar 
people in peculiarly unhappy circumstances, but that they 
were like all other men, ourselves included. 

I remember well how my intercourse with men of this class 
was particularly trying to me. I now understand why it was 


28 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


so. In them I saw my own self as in a mirror. If I had 
considered carefully my own life, and the lives of people of 
my own class, I should have seen, that, between us and these 
unfortunate men, there existed no essential difference. 

Those who live around me in expensive suites of apart¬ 
ments, and houses of their own in the best streets of the city, 
eating something better, too, than liver or herring with their 
bread, are none the less unhappy. They also are discon¬ 
tented with their lot, regret the past, and desire a happier 
future, precisely as did the wretched tenants of the Rzhanoff 
Houses. Both wish to work less, and to be worked for more, 
the difference between them being only in degrees of idleness. 

Unfortunately, I did not see this at first, nor did I under¬ 
stand that such people needed to be relieved, not by my 
charity, but of their own false views of the world;.and that, 
to change a man’s estimate of life, he must be given one 
more accurate than his own, which, unhappily, not possessing 
myself, I could not communicate to others. 

These men were unhappy, not because, to use an illustra¬ 
tion, they had not nourishing food, but because their stom¬ 
achs were spoiled; and the}’ required, not nourishment, but 
a tonic. I did not see, that, in order to help them, it was 
not necessary to give them food, but to teach them how to 
eat. Though I am anticipating, I must say, that, of all these 
people whose names I put down, I did not in reality help 
one, notwithstanding that all some of them had desired was 
done in order to relieve them. Of these I became acquainted 
with three men in particular. All three, after many failures 
and much assistance, are now just in the same position in 
which they were three years ago. 


VIII. 

Tiie second class of unfortunates, whom I hoped after¬ 
wards to be able to help, were women of the town. Such 
women were very numerous in the Rzhanoff Houses ; and they 
were of every kind, from young girls still bearing some like¬ 
ness to women, to old and fearful-looking creatures without a 
vestige of humanity. The hope of helping these women, 
whom I had not at first in view, was aroused by the following 
circumstances. 

When we had just finished half of our visiting-tour, we 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


29 


had already acquired a somewhat mechanical method. On 
entering a new lodging, we at once asked for the landlord. 
One of us sat down, clearing a space to write; and the other 
went from one to another, questioning each man and woman 
in the room, and reporting the information obtained to the 
one who was writing. 

On our entering one of the basement lodgings, the student 
went to look for the landlord; and I began to question all 
who were in the place. This place was thus divided : In the 
middle of the room, which was four yards square, there 
stood a stove. From the stove radiated four partitions, or 
screens, making a similar number of small compartments. 
In the first of these, which had two doors in it opposite each 
other, and four pallets, were an old man and a woman. Next 
to it was a rather long but narrow room, in which was the 
landlord, a young, pale, good-looking man, dressed in a gray 
woollen coat. To the left of the first division, there was a 
third small room where a man was sleeping, seemingly tipsy, 
and a woman in a pink dressing-gown. The fourth com¬ 
partment was behind a partition, access to it being through 
the landlord’s room. 

The student entered the latter, while I remained in the 
first, questioning the old man and the woman. The former 
had been a tjqiesetter, but had now no means of livelihood 
whatever. 

The woman was a cook’s wife. 

I went into the third compartment, and asked the woman 
in the dressing-gown about the man who was asleep. 

She answered that he was a visitor. 

I asked her who she was. 

She replied that she was a peasant girl from the county of 
Moscow. 

“ What is your occupation? ” She laughed, and made no 
answer. 

“ What do you do for your living?” I repeated, thinking 
she had not understood the question. 

“ I sit in the inn,” she said. 

I did not understand her, and asked again, — 

“ What are your means of living? ” 

She gave me no answer, but continued to giggle. In the 
fourth room, where we had not yet been, I heard the voices 
of women also giggling. 

The landlord came out of his room, and approached us. 


80 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


He had evidently heard my questions and the woman’s an¬ 
swers. He glanced sternly at her, and, turning to me, said, 
“ She is a prostitute ; ” and it was evident that he was pleased 
that he knew this word, which is the one used in official cir¬ 
cles, and at having pronounced it correctly. And having 
said this with a respectful smile of satisfaction towards me, 
he turned to the woman. As he did so, the expression of 
his face changed. In a peculiarly contemptuous manner, 
and with rapid utterance as one would speak to a dog, he 
said, without looking at her, “ Don’t be a fool! instead of 
saying you sit in the inn, speak plainly, and say you are a 
prostitute. — She does not even yet know her proper name,” 
he said, turning to me. 

This manner of'speaking shocked me. 

“ It is not for us to shame her,” I said. “If we were all 
living according to God’s commandment, there would be no 
such persons.” 

“Yes, yes: of course you are right,” said the landlord, 
with a forced smile. 

“Therefore we must pity them, and not reproach them as 
if it were their own fault entirely.” 

I do not remember exactly what I said. I remember only 
that I was disgusted by the disdainful tone of this young 
landlord, in a lodging filled with females whom he termed 
prostitutes ; and I pitied the woman, and expressed both 
feelings. 

No sooner had I said this, than I heard from the small 
compartment where the giggling had been, the noise of creak¬ 
ing bed-boards ; and over the partition, which did not reach 
to the ceiling, appeared the dishevelled curly head of a 
female with small swollen eyes, and a shining red face; 
a second, and then a third, head followed. They were evi¬ 
dently standing on their beds; and all three were stretching 
their necks and holding their breath, and looking silently at 
me with strained attention. 

A painful silence followed. 

The student, who had been smiling before this happened, 
now became grave ; the landlord became confused, and cast 
down his eyes; and the women continued to look at me in 
expectation. 

I felt more disconcerted than all the rest. I had certainly 
not expected that a casual word would produce such an 
effect. It was like the field of battle covered with dead 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


31 


bones seen by the prophet Ezekiel, on which, trembling from 
contact with the spirit, the dead bones began to move. I 
had casually uttered a word of love and pity, which pro¬ 
duced upon all such an effect that it seemed as if they had 
been only waiting for it, to cease to be corpses, and to 
become alive again. 

They continued to look at me, as if wondering what would 
come next, as if waiting for me to say those words and do 
those acts by which these dry bones would begin to come 
together, —be covered with flesh and receive life. 

But I felt, alas ! that I had no such w T ords or deeds to 
give, or to continue as I had begun. In the depth of my 
soul I felt that I had told a lie, that I myself was like them, 
that I had nothing more to say; and I began to write down 
on the domiciliary card the names and the occupations of all 
the lodgers there. 

This occurrence led me into a new kind of error. I began 
to think that these unhappy ones also could be helped. This, 
in my self-deception it seemed to me, would be very easily 
done. I said to myself, “ Now we shall put down the names 
of these women too; and afterwards, when we (though it 
never occurred to me to ask who were the ice) have written 
every thing down, we can occupy ourselves with their affairs.” 
I imagined that we, the very persons who, during many gen¬ 
erations, have been leading such women into such a condi¬ 
tion, and still continue to do so, could one fine morning 
wake, and remedy it all. And yet, if I could have recol¬ 
lected my conversation with the lost woman who was nursing 
the baby for the sick mother, I should have understood all 
the folly of such an idea. 

When we first saw this woman nursing the child, we 
thought that it was hers ; but upon our asking her what she 
was, she answered us plainly that she was unmarried. She 
did not say “ prostitute.” It was left for the rude pro¬ 
prietor of the lodgings to make use of that terrible word. 
The supposition that she had a child gave me the idea of 
helping her out of her present position. 

“ Is this child yours? ” I asked. 

“ No : it is that woman’s there.” 

“ Why do you nurse him? ” 

“ She asked me to : she is dying.” 

Though my surmise turned out to be wrong, I continued 
to speak with her in the same spirit. I began to question 


32 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


her as to who she was, and how she came to be in such a 
position. She told me her story willingly, and very plainly. 
She belonged to the lower ranks of Moscow society, the 
daughter of a factory workman. She was left an orphan, 
and adopted by her aunt, from whose house she began to 
visit the inns. The aunt was now dead. 

When I asked her whether she wished to change her course 
of life, my question did not even interest her. How can a 
supposition about something quite impossible awaken an 
interest in any one? She smiled, and said, - - 

“ Who would take me with a yellow ticket? ” 

“ But,” said I, “if it were possible to find you a situation 
as a cook or something else?” I said this because she 
looked like a strong woman, with a kind, dull, round face, 
not unlike many cooks I had seen. 

Evidently my words did not please her. She repeated, 
“ Cook ! but I do not understand how to bake bread.” 

She spoke jestingly; but, by the expression of her face, I 
saw that she was unwilling; that she even considered the 
position and rank of a cook beneath her. 

This woman, who, in the most simple manner, like the 
widow in the gospel, had sacrificed all that she had for a 
sick person, at the same time, like other women of the same 
profession, considered the position of a workman orworking- 
woman low and despicable. She had been educated in order 
to live without work, — a life which all her friends considered 
quite natural. This was her misfortune. And by this she 
came into her present position, and is kept in it. This 
brought her to the inns. Who of us men and women will 
cure her of this false view of life? Are there among us men 
convinced that a laborious life is more respectable than an 
idle one, and who are living according to this conviction, 
and who make this the test of their esteem and respect? 

If I had thought about it, I should have understood that 
neither I, nor anybody else I know, was able to cure a person 
of this disease. 

I should have understood that those wondering and awak¬ 
ened faces that looked over the partition expressed merely 
astonishment at the pity shown to them, but no wish to 
reform their lives. They did not see the immorality of them. 
They knew that they were despised and condemned, but the 
reason for it they could not understand. They had lived in 
this manner from their infancy among women like them- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


83 


selves, who, they know very well, have always existed, do 
exist, and are so necessary to society, that there are officials 
deputed by government to see that they conform to regula¬ 
tions. 

Besides, they know that they have power over men, and 
subdue them, and often influence them more than any other 
women. They see that their position in society, notwith¬ 
standing the fact that they are always blamed, is recognized 
by men as well as by women and by the government; and 
therefore they cannot even understand of what they have to 
repent, and wherein they should reform. 

During one of our visiting-tours the student told me, that, 
in one of the lodgings, there was a woman about to sell her 
daughter, thirteen years old. Wishing t6 save this little girl, 
I went on purpose to their lodging. 

Mother and daughter were living in great poverty. The 
mother, a small, dark-complexioned prostitute of forty years 
of age, was not simply ugly, but disagreeably ugly. The 
daughter also w r as bad-looking. To all my indirect ques¬ 
tions about their mode of life, the mother replied curtly, 
with a look of suspicion and animosity, apparently feeling 
that I was an enemy with bad intentions: the daughter said 
nothing without looking first at the mother, in whom she 
evidently had entire confidence. 

They did not awaken pity in my heart, but rather disgust. 
But I decided that it was necessary to save the daughter, to 
awaken an interest in ladies who might sympathize with the 
miserable condition of these women, and might so be brought 
here. 

But if I had thought about the antecedents of the mother, 
how she had given birth to her daughter, how she had fed 
and educated her, certainly without any outside help, and 
with great sacrifices to herself '; if I had thought of the view 
of life which had formed itself in her mind, — I should have 
understood, that, in the mother’s conduct, there was nothing 
at all bad or immoral, seeing she had been doing for her 
daughter all she could; i.e., what she considered best for 
herself. 

It was possible to take this girl away from her mother by 
force ; but to convince her that she was doing wrong in sell¬ 
ing her daughter, was not possible. It would first be neces¬ 
sary to save this woman — this mother — from a condition 
of life approved by every one, and according to which a 


34 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


woman may live without marrying and without working, 
serving exclusively as a gratification to the passions. If I 
had thought about this, I should have understood that the 
majority of those ladies whom I wished to send here for tl\e 
saving of this girl were not only themselves avoiding family 
duties, and leading idle and sensual lives, but were con¬ 
sciously educating their daughters for this very same mode 
of existence. One mother leads her daughter to the inn, 
and another to court and to balls. But the views of the 
world held by both mothers are the same; viz., that a 
woman must gratify the lusts of men, and for that she must 
be fed, dressed, and taken care of. 

How, then, are our ladies to reform this woman and her 
daughter ? 


IX. 

Still more strange were my dealings with the children. 
In my role as a benefactor, I paid attention to the children, 
too, wishing to save innocent beings from going to ruin in 
this den ; and I wrote down their names in order to attend to 
them myself afterwards. 

Among these children, my attention was particularly drawn 
to Serozha, a boy twelve years old. I sincerely pitied this 
clever, intelligent lad, who had been living with a bootmaker, 
and who was left without any place of refuge when his mas¬ 
ter was put into prison. I wished to do something for him. 

I will now give the result of my benevolence in his case, 
because this bo}'’s story will show my false position as a 
benefactor better than any thing else. 

I took the boy into m} T house, and lodged him in the 
kitchen. Could I possibly bring a lousy boy out of a den of 
depravity to my children ? I considered that I had been very 
kind in having put him where he was, amongst my servants. 
I thought myself a great benefactor for having given him 
some of my old clothes and fed him ; though it was properly 
my cook who did it, not I. The boy remained in my house 
about a week. 

During this week I saw him twice, and, passing by him, 
spoke some words to him, and, when out walking, called on 
a bootmaker whom I knew, and proposed the boy as an 
apprentice. A peasant who was on a visit at my house 
invited him to go to his village, and work in a family. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


85 


The boy refused to accept it, and disappeared within a 
week. 

I went to Rzhanoff’s house to inquire after him. He had 
returned there ; but when I called, he was not at home. He 
had already been two days to the zoological gardens, where 
he hired himself for thirty kopeks a day to appear in a pro¬ 
cession of savages in costume, leading an elephant. There 
was some public show on at the time. 

I went to see him again, but he evidently avoided me. 
Had I reflected upon the life of this boy, and on my own, I 
should have understood that the boy had been spoiled by the 
fact of his having tasted the sweets of a merry and idle life, 
and that he had lost the habit of working. And I, in order 
to confer a benefit on him and reform him, took him into my 
own house; and what did he see there ? He saw my chil¬ 
dren, some older than he, some younger, and some of the 
same age, who not only never did any thing for themselves, 
but gave as much work to others as they could. They 
dirtied and spoiled every thing about them, surfeited them¬ 
selves with all sorts of dainties, broke the china, upset and 
threw to the dogs food which would have been a treat to 
him. If I took him out of a den and brought him to a re¬ 
spectable place, he could not but assimilate those views of 
life which existed there; and, according to these views, he 
understood, that, in a respectable position, one must live 
without working, eat and drink well, and lead a merry life. 

True, he did not know that my children had much labor 
in learning the exceptions in Latin and Greek grammars ; 
and he would not have been able to understand the object of 
such work. But one cannot help seeing, that, had he even 
understood it, the influence upon him of the example of my 
children would have been still stronger. He would have then 
understood that they were being educated in such a way, that, 
not working now, they might hereafter also work as little as 
possible, and enjoy the good things of life by virtue of their 
diplomas. 

But what he did understand of it, made him go, not to the 
peasant to take care of cattle and feed on potatoes and 
kvas, but to the zoological gardens in the costume of a 
savage to lead an elephant for thirty kopeks a day. I ought 
to have understood how foolish it was of. one who was educat¬ 
ing his own children in complete idleness and luxury, to try 
to reform other men and their children, and save them from 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


36 


going to ruin and idleness in what I called the dens in 
Rz turnoff's house ; where, however, three-fourths of the men 
were working for themselves and for others. But then 1 
understood nothing of all this. 

In Rzhanoff’s house, there were a great many children in 
the most miserable condition. There were children of pros¬ 
titutes, orphans, and children carried about the streets by 
beggars. They were all very wretched. But my experience 
with Serozha showed me, that, so long as I continued living 
the life which I did, I was not able to help them. 

While the latter was living with us, I remember that I took 
pains to hide from him our way of life, particularly that of 
my children. I felt that all my endeavors to lead him to a 
good and laborious life were frustrated by my example, and 
that of my children. It is very easy to take away a child 
from a prostitute or a beggar. It is very easy, when one 
has money, to wash him, dress him in new clothes, feed him 
well, and even teach him different accomplishments; but to 
teach him how to earn his living, is, for us who have not been 
earning ours, but have been doing just the contrary, not only 
difficult, but quite impossible, because by our example, and 
by the very improvements of his mode of life effected bj* us, 
without any cost on our part, we teach him the very opposite. 

You may take a puppy, pet him, feed him, teach him to 
carry things after you, and be pleased with looking at him : 
but it is not enough to feed a man, dress him, and teach him 
Greek; you must teach him how to live; i.e., howto take 
less from others, and give them more in return : and yet we 
cannot help teaching him the very opposite, through our own 
mode of life, whether we take him into our own house, or 
put him into a home to bring up. 


X. 

I have never since experienced such a feeling of compas¬ 
sion towards men, and of aversion towards myself, as I felt 
in Liapin’s house. I was now' filled with the desire to carry 
out the scheme which I had already begun, and to do good to 
those men w'hom I met with. 

And, strange to say, though it might seem that to do good 
and to give money to those in w r ant of it, w T as a good deed, 
and ought to dispose men to universal love, it turned out 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


37 


quite the reverse ; calling up in me bitter feeling, and a dis¬ 
position to censure them. Even during our first visiting-tour a 
scene occurred similar to that in Liapin’s house ; but it failed 
to produce again the same effect, and created a very different 
impression. 

It began with my finding in one of the lodgings a miserable 
person who required immediate help, — a woman who had not 
eaten food for two days. 

It happened thus: In one very large and almost empty 
night-lodging, I asked an old woman whether there were any 
poor people who had nothing to eat. She hesitated a moment, 
and then named two; then suddenly, as if recollecting her¬ 
self, she said, “Yes, there lies one of them,” pointing to 
a pallet. “ This one,” she added, “ indeed, has nothing to 
eat.” 

“You don’t say so! Who is she?” 

“ She has been a lost woman ; but as nobody takes her 
now, she can’t earn any thing. The landlady has had pity 
on her, but now she w r ants to turn her out. —Agafia! I say, 
Agafia! ” cried the old woman. 

We went a little nearer, and saw something rise from the 
pallet. This was a gray-haired, dishevelled woman, thin as 
a skeleton, in a dirty, torn chemise, and with peculiarly glit¬ 
tering, immovable eyes. She looked fixedly beyond us, tried 
to snatch uy her jacket behind her in order to cover her 
bony chest, and growled out like a dog, “ What? what?” 

I asked her how she managed to live. For some time she 
was unable to see the drift of my words, and said, “I do 
not know myself: they are going to turn me out.” 

I asked again ; and oh, how ashamed of myself I feel! 
my hand can scarcely write it! I asked her whether it was 
true that she was starving. She replied in the same feverish, 
fexcited manner, “I had nothing to eat } T esterday; I have 
had nothing to eat to-day.” 

The miserable aspect of this woman impressed me deeply, 
but quite differently, from what those had in Liapin’s house: 
there, out of pity for them, I felt embarrassed and ashamed 
of myself ; but here, I rejoiced that I had, at last, found what 
I had been looking for, — a hungry being. 

I gave her a ruble, and I remember how glad I felt that 
the others had seen it. 

The old woman forthwith asked me also for money. It 
was so pleasant to me to give, that I handed her some also, 


88 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


without thinking whether it was necessary or not. She 
accompanied me to the door, and those who were in the cor¬ 
ridor heard how she thanked me. Probably my questions 
about the poor provoked expectations, for some of the 
inmates began to follow us wherever we went. 

Among those that begged, there were evidently drunkards, 
who gave me a most disagreeable impression ; but, having 
once given to the old woman, I thought I had no right to 
refuse them, and I began to give awa}’ more. This only 
increased the number of applicants, and there was a stir 
throughout the whole lodging-house. 

On the stairs and in the galleries, people appeared dogging 
my steps. When I came out of the yard, a boy ran quickly 
down the stairs, pushing through the people. He did not 
notice me, and said hurriedly, — 

“ He gave a ruble to Agafia ! ” 

Having reached the ground, he, too, joined the crowd that 
was following me. I came out into the street. All sorts of 
people crowded round me, begging for mone} r . Having given 
away all I had in coppers, I entered a shop and asked the 
proprietor to give me change for ten rubles. 

And here a scene similar to that which took place in 
Liapin’s house occurred. A dreadful confusion ensued. 
Old women, seedy gentlefolk, peasants, children, all crowded 
about the shop, stretching out their hands; J gave, and 
asked some of them about their position and means, and 
entered all in my note-book. The shopkeeper, having turned 
up the fur collar of his great-coat, was sitting like a statue, 
glancing now and then at the crowd, and again staring 
beyond it. He apparently felt like every one else, that all 
this was very foolish, but he dared not say so. 

In Liapin’s house the misery and humiliation of the people 
had overwhelmed me; and I felt myself to blame for it, and 
also felt the desire and the possibility of becoming a better man. 
But though the scene here was similar, it produced a quite 
different effect. In the first place, I felt angry with many 
of those who assailed me, and then I felt anxious as to what 
the shopmen and the dvorniks might think of me. I 
returned home that day with a weight on my mind. I knew 
that what I had done was foolish and inconsistent; but, as 
usual, when my conscience was troubled, I talked the more 
about my projected plan, as if I had no doubt whatever as 
to its success. 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


39 


The next day I went alone to those whom I had noted 
down, and who seemed the most miserable, thinking they 
could be more easily helped than others. 

As I have already mentioned, I was not really able to help 
any of these people. It turned out that to do so was more 
difficult than I had imagined: either I did not understand 
how to do it, or else it was indeed impossible. 

1 went several times before the last visiting-tour to Rzhan- 
off’s house, and each time the same thing occurred: I was 
assailed by a crowd of men and women, in the midst of whom 
I utterly lost my presence of mind. 

1 felt the impossibility of doing any thing because there 
were so many of them, and I was angry with them because 
they were so many ; besides, each of them, taken separately, 
did not awaken any sympathy in me. I felt that each one of 
them lied, or at least prevaricated, and regarded me only as 
a purse out of which money could be abstracted. It often 
seemed to me that the very money which was extorted from 
me did not improve their position, but only made it worse. 

The oftener I went to these houses, the closer the inter¬ 
course which I had with the inmates, the more apparent 
became the impossibility of doing any thing; but, notwith¬ 
standing this, I did not give up my plan until after the last 
night tour with the census-takers. 

I feel more ashamed of this visit than of any other. 
Formerly I had gone alone, but now twenty of us went 
together. At seven o’clock all those who wished to take 
part in this last tour began to assemble in m 3 7 house. They 
were almost all strangers to me. Some students, an officer, 
and two of my fashionable acquaintances, who, after having 
repeated the usual phrase, u C’est tr 6 s int 6 ressant! ” asked 
me to put them into the number of the census-takers. 

These fashionable friends of mine had dressed themselves 
in shooting-jackets and high travelling boots, which they 
thought more suited to the visit than their ordinary attire. 
They carried with them peculiar pocket-books and extraordi- 
naiy-looking pencils. They were in that agitated state of 
mind which one experiences just before going to a hunt, or to 
a duel, or into a battle. The falseness and foolishness of our 
enterprise was now more apparant to me when looking at 
them ; but were we not all in the same ridiculous position ? 

Before starting we had a conference, somewhat like a 
council of war, "as to what we should begin with, how to 


40 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


divide ourselves, and so on. This conference was just like 
all other official councils, meetings, and committees: each 
spoke, not because he had any thing to say, or to ask, but 
because every one tried to find something to sa}' in order not 
to be behind the rest. But during this conversation no one 
alluded to the acts of benevolence to which I had so many 
times referred; and however much ashamed I felt, I found 
it was needful to remind them that we must carry out our 
charitable intentions by writing down, during the visiting- 
tour, the names of all whom we should find in a destitute 
condition. 

I had always felt ashamed to speak about these matters ; 
but here, in the midst of our hurried preparations for the 
expedition, I could scarcely utter a word about them. All 
listened to me and seemed touched, all agreed with me 
in words; but it was evident that each of them knew that 
it was folly, and that it would lead to nothing, so they began 
at once to talk about other subjects, and continued doing so 
until it was time for us to start. 

We came to the dark tavern, aroused the waiters, and 
began to sort our papers. When we were told that the peo¬ 
ple, having heard about this visiting-tour, had begun to leave 
their lodgings, we asked the landlord to shut the gate, and 
we ourselves went to the yard to persuade those to remain 
who wanted to escape, assuring them that no one would ask 
to see their tickets. 

I remember the strange and painful impression produced 
upon me by these frightened night-lodgers. Ragged and half- 
dressed, they all appeared tall to me by the light of the lan¬ 
tern in the dark court-yard. Frightened and horrible in their 
terror, they stood in a small knot round the pestilential out¬ 
house, listening to our persuasions, but not believing us ; and 
evidently, like hunted animals, were prepared to do any thing 
to escape from us. 

Gentlemen of all kinds, town and country policemen, pub¬ 
lic prosecutors and judges, had, all their lives long, been 
hunting them in towns and villages, on the roads and in the 
streets, in the taverns and in the lodging-houses, and sud¬ 
denly these gentlemen ‘had come at night and shut the gate, 
only, forsooth, in order to count them ; they found it as diffi¬ 
cult to believe this as it would be for hares to believe that 
the dogs are come out not to catch but to count them. 

But the gates were shut, and the frightened night-lodgers 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


41 


returned to their respective places ; and we, having separated 
into groups, began our visit. With me were my fashionable 
acquaintances and two students. Vanya, w T ith a lantern, 
went before us in a great-coat and white trousers, and we fol¬ 
lowed. We entered lodgings well known to me. The place 
was familiar, some of the persons also ; but the majority were 
new to me, and the spectacle was also a new and dreadful one, 
— still more dreadful than that which I had seen at Liapin’s 
house. All the lodgings were filled, all the pallets occupied, 
and not only by one, but often by two persons. The sight 
.was dreadful, because of the closeness with which these 
people w r ere huddled together, and because of the indis¬ 
criminate commingling of men and women. Such of the 
latter as were not dead-drunk were sleeping with men. Many 
women with children slept with strange men on narrow beds. 

The spectacle was dreadful, owing to the misery, dirt, rag¬ 
gedness, and terror of these people ; and chiefly so because 
there were so many of them. One lodging, then another, 
then a third, a tenth, a twentieth, and so on, without end. 
And everywhere the same fearful stench, the same suffo¬ 
cating exhalation, the same confusion of sexes, men and 
women, drunk, or in a state of insensibility ; the same terror, 
submissiveness, and guilt stamped on all faces, so that I felt 
deeply ashamed and grieved, as I had before at Liapin’s. 
At lastT understood that what I was about to do was dis¬ 
gusting, foolish, and therefore impossible ; so I left off writ¬ 
ing down their names and questioning them, knowing now 
that nothing would come of it. 

At Liapin’s I had been like a man who sees a horrible 
wound on the body of another. He feels sorry for the man, 
ashamed of not having relieved him before, } 7 et he can still 
hope to help the sufferer; but now I was like a doctor who 
comes with his own medicines to the patient, uncovers his 
wound only to mangle it, and to confess to himself that 
all he has done has been in vain, and that his remedy is inef¬ 
fectual. 


XI. 

This visit gave the last blow to my self-deception. It be¬ 
came very evident to me that my aim was not only foolish, 
but also productive of evil. And yet, though I knew this, it 
seemed to be my duty to continue my project a little longer: 


42 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


first, because by the article which I had written, and my 
visits, I had raised the expectations of the poor; secondly, 
because what I had said and written had awakened the 
sympathy of some benefactors, many of whom had promised 
to assist me personally and with money. And I was expect¬ 
ing to be applied to by both, and hoped to satisfy them as 
well as I was able. 

As regards the applications made to me by those who were 
in need, the following details may be gi*en: I received more 
than a hundred letters, which came exclusively from the 
“rich poor,” if I may so express myself. Some of them I 
visited, and some I left unanswered. In no instance did 
I succeed in doing any good. All the applications made to 
me were from persons who were once in a privileged position 
(I call such persons privileged who receive more from others 
than they give in return), had lost that position, and were 
desirous of regaining it. One wanted two hundred rubles 
in order to keep his business from going to. ruin, and to 
enable him to finish the education of his children ; another 
wanted to have a photographic establishment; a third wanted 
money to pay his debts, and take his best clothes out of 
pawn ; a fourth was in need of a piano, in order to perfect 
himself, and earn money to support his family by giving les¬ 
sons. The majority did not name an}^ particular sum of 
money: the} T simply asked for help ; but when I began to in¬ 
vestigate what was necessary, it turned out that their wants 
increased in proportion to the help offered, and nothing 
satisfactory resulted. I repeat again, the fault may have 
been in my want of understanding; but in any case I helped 
no one, notwithstanding the fact that 1 made every effort to 
do so. 

As for the philanthropists who were to co-operate with me, 
something very strange and quite unexpected occurred: of 
all who promised to assist with money, and even stated the 
amount they would give, not one contributed any thing for 
distribution among the poor. 

The promises of pecuniary assistance amounted to about 
three thousand rubles ; but of all these people, not one recol¬ 
lected his agreement, or gave me a single kopek. The 
students alone gave the monej^ which they received as pay¬ 
ment for visiting, about twelve rubles ; so that my scheme, 
which was to have collected tens of thousands of rubles from 
the rich, and to have saved hundreds and thousands of 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


43 


people from misery and vice, ended in my distributing at 
random some few rubles among those who came begging; 
and there remained on my hands the twelve rubles offered by 
the students, with twenty-five more sent me by the town- 
council for my labor as manager, which I positively did not 
know what to do with. 

And so ended the affair. 

Then, before leaving Moscow for the country, on the Sun¬ 
day before the carnival I went to the Rzhanoff house in the 
morning in order to distribute the thirty-seven rubles among 
the poor. I visited all whom I knew in the lodgings, but 
found only one invalid, to whom I gave something, — 1 think, 
five rubles. There was nobody else to give to. Of course, 
many began to beg; but, as I did not know them, I made 
up my mind to take the advice of Ivan Fedotitch, the tavern- 
keeper, respecting the distribution of the remaining thirty- 
two rubles. 

It was the. first day of the carnival. Everybody was 
smartly dressed, all had had food, and many were drunk. In 
the yard near the corner of the house stood an old-clothes 
man, dressed in a ragged peasant’s coat and bark shoes. 
He was still hale and hearty. Sorting his purchases, he was 
putting them into different heaps, —leather, iron, and other 
things, — and was singing a merry song at the top of his 
voice. 

I began to talk with him. He was seventy years of age; 
had no relatives ; earned his living by dealing in old clothes, 
and not only did not complain, but said he had enough to 
eat, drink, and to spare. I asked him who in the place were 
particularly in want. He became cross, and said plainly that 
there was no one in want but drunkards and idlers; but on 
learning my object in asking, he begged of me five kopeks 
for drink, and ran to the tavern for it. 

I also went to the tavern to see Ivan Fedotitch, in order to 
ask him to distribute the money for me. It was full; gayly- 
dressed tips}' prostitutes were walking to and fro; all the 
tables were occupied ; many people were already drunk ; and 
in the small room some one was playing a harmonium, and 
two people were dancing. Ivan Fedotitch, out of respect for 
me, ordered them to leave off, and sat down next me at a 
vacant table. I asked him, as he knew his lodgers well, to 
point out those most in want, as I was intrusted with a little 
money for distribution, and wished him to direct me. The 


44 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


kind-hearted man (he died a year after), although he had to 
wait on his customers, gave me his attention for a time in 
order to oblige me. He began to think over it, and was 
evidently puzzled. One old waiter had overheard us, and 
took bis part in the conference. 

They began to go over his lodgers, some of whom were 
known to me, but they could not agree. “ Paramonovna,” 
suggested the waiter. 

“Well, yes, she does go hungry sometimes; but she 
drinks.” 

“ What difference does that make? ” 

“ Well, Spiridon Ivanovitch, he has children ; that's the 
man for you. ” 

But Ivan Fedotitch had doubts about Spiridon too. 

“ Akulina, but she has a pension. Ah, but there is the 
blind man ! ” 

To him I myself objected : I had just seen him. This was 
an old man of eighty years of age, without any relatives. 
One could scarcely imagine any condition to be worse ; and 
yet I had just seen him lying drunk on a feather \>ed, curs¬ 
ing at his comparatively young mistress in the most filthy 
language. 

The}’ then named a one-armed boy and his mother. I saw 
that Ivan Fedotitch was in great difficulty, owing to his 
conscientiousness, for he knew that every thing given away 
by me would be spent at his tavern. But as I had to get 
rid of my thirty-two rubles, I insisted, and we managed 
somehow or other to distribute the money. Those who re¬ 
ceived it were mostly well-dressed, and we had not far to go 
to find them : they were all in the tavern. 

Thus ended all my benevolent enterprises ; and I left for 
the country, vexed with every one, as it always happens 
when one does something foolish and harmful. Nothing 
came of it all, except the train of thoughts and feelings 
which it called forth in me, which not only did not cease, but 
doubly agitated my mind. 


XII. 

What did it all mean ? 

I had lived in the country, and had entered into relations 
with the country-poor. It is not out of false modesty, but in 
order to state the truth, which is necessary in order to under¬ 
stand the run of all my thoughts and feelings, that I must 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


45 


say that in the country I had done perhaps but little for the 
poor, the help which had been required of me was so small; 
but even the little I had done had been useful, and had 
formed round me an atmosphere of love and sympathy with 
my fellow-creatures, in the midst of whom it might yet be 
possible for me to quiet the gnawing of my conscience as to 
the unlawfulness of my life of luxury. 

On going to the city I had hoped for the same happy rela¬ 
tions with the poor, but there things were upon quite another 
footing. In the city, poverty was at once less truthful, more 
exacting, and more bitter, than in the country. It was chiefly 
because there was so much more of it accumulated together, 
that it produced upon me a most harrowing impression. 
What I experienced at Liapin’s house made my own luxuri¬ 
ous life seem monstrously evil. I could not doubt the sin- 
cerhy and the strength of this conviction ; yet, notwithstanding 
this, I was quite incapable of carrying out that revolution 
which demanded an entire change in my mode of life: I was 
frightened at the prospect, and so I resorted to compromises. 
I accepted what I was told by every one, and what has been 
said by everybody since the world began, — that riches and 
luxury contain in themselves no evil, that they are given by 
God, and that it .is possible to help those in need whilst con¬ 
tinuing to live luxuriously. I believed this, and wanted to 
do so. And I wrote an article in which I called upon all 
rich people to help. These all admitted themselves morally 
obliged to agree with me, but evidently did not wish, or could 
not, either do or give any thing for the poor. 

I then began visiting, and discovered what I had in no 
way expected to see. On the one hand, I saw in these dens 
(as I had at first called them) men whom it was impossible 
for me to help, because they were working-men, accustomed to 
labor and privation, and therefore having a much firmer hold 
on life than I had. On the other hand, I saw miserable men 
whom I could not aid because they were just such as I was 
myself. The majority of the poor whom I saw were wretched, 
merely because they had lost the capacity, desire, and habit 
of earning their bread ; in other words, their miseiy consisted 
in the fact that they were just like myself. Whereas, of poor 
people, to whom it was possible to give immediate assistance, 
— those suffering from illness, cold, and hunger,—I found 
none, except the starving Agafia; and I became persuaded 
that, being so far removed from the life of those whom I 


46 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


wished to succor, it was almost impossible to find such need 
as I sought, because all real need was attended to by those 
amongst whom these unhappy creatures lived: and my prin¬ 
cipal conviction now was, that, with money, I could never 
reform that life of misery which these people led. 

I was persuaded of this : yet a feeling of shame to leave off 
all I had begun, and self-deception as to my own virtues, 
made me continue my plan for some time longer, till it died 
a natural death ; thus, only with great difficulty and the help 
of Ivan Fedotitch, I managed to distribute in the tavern 
at Rzhanoff’s house the thirty-seven rubles which I con¬ 
sidered were not my own. 

Of course I might have continued this style of thing, and 
have transformed it into a kind of charity ; and, by importun¬ 
ing those who promised to give me money, I might have 
obtained and distributed more, thus comforting myself with 
the idea of my own excellence : but I became convinced on 
the one hand, that we rich people do not wish, and are also 
unable, to distribute to the poor a portion of our superfluities 
(we have so many wants ourselves), and that money should 
not be given to any one if we really wished to do good, and 
not merely to distribute it at random as I had done in the 
Rzhanoff tavern ; so I dropped the affair entirely, and quitted 
Moscow, in despair, for my own village. 

I intended on returning home to write a pamphlet on my 
experience, and to state why my project had not succeeded. 
I wanted to justify myself from the imputations which re¬ 
sulted from my article on the census; I wanted also to 
denounce society and its heartless indifference ; and I desired 
to point out the causes of this town misery, and the necessity 
for endeavoring to remedy it, as well as those means which 
I thought were requisite for this purpose. I began even then 
to write, and fancied I had many very important facts to 
communicate. But in vain did I rack my brain : I could not 
manage it, notwithstanding the superabundance of material 
at my command, because of the irritation under which I 
wrote, and because I had not yet learned b}^ experience what 
was necessary to grasp the question rightly; still more be¬ 
cause I had not become fully conscious of the cause of it all, 
— a very simple cause, which was deep-rooted in myself ; so 
the pamphlet was not finished at the commencement of the 
present year (1884-1885). In the matter of moral law we 
witness a strange phenomenon to wdiich men pay too little 


WIT AT MUST WE DO THENf 


47 


attention. If I speak to an unlearned man about geology, 
astronomy, history, natural philosophy, or mathematics, he 
receives the information as quite hew to him, and never says 
to me, “ There is nothing new iu what you tell me ; every one 
knows it, and I have known it for a long time.” 

But tell a man one of the highest moral truths in the 
simplest manner, in such a way as it has never been before 
formulated, and every ordinary man, particularly one who 
does not take any interest in moral questions, and, above all, 
one who dislikes them, is sure to say, u Who does not know 
that? It has been always known and expressed.” And he 
really believes this. Only those who can appreciate moral 
truths know how to value their elucidation and simplification 
by a long and laborious process, or can prize the transition 
from a first vaguely understood proposition or desire to a 
firm and determined expression calling for a corresponding 
change of conduct. 

We are all accustomed to consider moral doctrine to be a 
very insipid and dull affair, in which there cannot be any 
thing new or interesting; whereas, in reality, human life, 
with all its complicated and varied actions, which seem to 
have no connection with morals, — political activity, activity 
in the sciences, in the arts, and in commerce, — has no other 
object than to elucidate moral truths more and more, and to 
confirm, simplify, and make them accessible to all. 

I recollect once while walking in a street in Moscow I saw 
a man come out and examine the flag-stones attentively; 
then, choosing one of them, he sat down by it and began 
to scrape or rub it vigorously. 

“ What is he doing with the pavement? ” I wondered ; and, 
having come up close to him, I discovered he was a young 
man from a butcher’s shop, and was sharpening his knife on 
the flagstone. He was not thinking about the stones when 
examining them, and still less while doing his work: he was 
merely sharpening his knife. It was necessary for him to do 
so in order to cut the meat, but to me it seemed that he was 
doing something to the pavement. 

In the same way mankind seems to be occupied with com¬ 
merce, treaties, wars, sciences, arts; and yet for them one 
thing only is important, and they do only that, — they are 
elucidating those moral laws by which they live. 

Moral laws are already in existence, and mankind has been 
merely re-discovering them: this elucidation appears to be 


48 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


unimportant and imperceptible to one who has no need of 
moral law, and who does not desire to live by it. Tet this is 
not only the chief, but ought to be the sole, business of all 
men. This elucidation is imperceptible in the same way'as 
the difference between a sharp knife and a blunt one is im¬ 
perceptible. A knife remains a knife; and one who has not 
got to cut any thing with it, will not notice its edge: but for 
one who understands that all his life depends more or less 
upon whether his knife is blunt or sharp, every improvement 
in sharpening it is important; and such a man knows that 
there must be no limit to this improvement, and that the 
knife is only really a knife when it is sharp, and vjien it cuts 
what it has to cut. 

The conviction of this truth flashed upon me when I began 
to write my pamphlet. Previously it seemed to me that I 
knew every thing about my subject, that I had a thorough 
understanding of every thing connected with those questions 
which had been awakened in me by the impressions made in 
Liapin’s house during the census; but when I tried to sum 
them up, and to put them on paper, it turned out that the 
knife would not cut, and had to be sharpened: so it is only 
now after three years that I feel my knife is sharp enough 
for me to cut out what I want. It is not that I have learned 
new things: my thoughts are still the same; but they were 
blunt formerly; they kept scattering in every direction ; 
there was no edge to them ; nor was any thing brought, as it 
is now, to one central point, to one most simple and plain 
conclusion. 


XIII. 

I recollect that during the whole time of my unsuccess¬ 
ful endeavors to help the unfortunate inhabitants of Moscow, 
I felt that I was like a man trying to help others out of a 
morass, who was himself all the time stuck fast in it. Every 
effort made me feel the instability of that ground upon which 
I was standing. I was conscious that I myself was in this 
same morass; but this acknowledgment did not help me to 
look more closely under my feet in order to ascertain the 
nature of the ground upon which I stood : I kept looking for 
some exterior means to remedy the existing evil. 

I felt then that my life was a bad one, and that people 
ought not to live so ; yet I did not come to the most natural 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


49 


and obvious conclusion, that I must first reform my own mode 
of life before I should have any conception of how to reform 
that of others. And so I began as it were at the wrong end. 
I was living in town, and I desired to improve the lives of 
the men there ; but I w r as soon convinced that I had no power 
to do so, and I began to ponder over the nature of town life 
and town misery. 

I said to myself over and over, “ What is this town life 
and town misery? And why, while living in town, am I 
unable to help the town poor?” The only reply I found 
was, that I was powerless to do any thing for them : first, 
because there were too many collected together in one place; 
secondly, because none of them was at all like those in the 
country. And again I asked myself, “ Why are there so 
many here, and in what do they differ from the country 
poor? ” 

To both these questions the answer was one and the same. 
There are many poor people in towns because there all those 
who have nothing to subsist on in the country are collected 
round the rich, and their peculiarit\ T consists only in that 
they have all come into the towms from the country in order 
to get a living. (If there are any town poor born there, 
whose fathers and grandfathers were towm born, these in 
their turn originally came there to get a living.) But what 
are we to understand by the expression, “ getting a living in 
town”? There is something strange in the expression : it 
sounds like a joke when we reflect on.its meaning. How is 
it that from the country— i.e., from places where there are 
woods, meadows, corn and cattle, where the earth yields the 
treasures of fertility—men come away in order to get a 
living in a place where there are none of these advantages, 
but only stones and dust? What, then, do these words 
signify, to u get a living in town ” ? 

Such a phrase is constantly used, both by the employed 
and their employers, and that as if it were quite clear and 
intelligible. I remember now all the hundreds and thousands 
of town people living w r ell or in want with whom I had 
spoken about their object in coming here ; and all of them, 
without exception, told me they had quitted their villages in 
order to get a living ; that according to the proverb, “ Mos¬ 
cow neither sows nor reaps, yet lives in wealth;” that in 
Moscow there is abundance of every thing; and that, there¬ 
fore, in Moscow one may get the money which is needed in 


50 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


the country for getting corn, cottages, horses, and the other 
essentials of life. 

But, in fact, the source of all wealth is the country ; there 
only are real riches, — corn, woods, horses, and every thing 
necessary. Why then go to towns in order to get what is 
to be had in the country? And why should people carry 
away from the country into the towns such things as are 
necessary for country people, — flour, oats, horses, and 
cattle ? 

Hundreds of times have I spoken thus with peasants who 
live in towns ; and from my talks with them, and from my 
own observations, it became clear to me that the accumula¬ 
tion of country people in our cities is partly necessary, be¬ 
cause they could not otherwise earn their livelihood, and 
partly voluntary, because they are attracted by the tempta¬ 
tions of a town life. It is true that the circumstances of a 
peasant are such, that, in order to satisfy the pecuniaiy de¬ 
mands made on him in his village, he cannot do it otherwise 
than by selling that corn and cattle which he very well knows 
will be necessary for himself; and he is compelled, whether 
he will or not, to go to town in order to earn back that which 
was his own. But it is also true that he is attracted to town 
by the charms of a comparatively easy way of getting money, 
and by the luxury of life there ; and, under the pretext of 
thus earning his living, he goes there in order to have easier 
work and better eating, to drink tea three times a day, to 
dress himself smartly, and even to get drunk, and lead a dis¬ 
solute life. 

The cause is a simple one, for property passing from the 
hands of the agriculturalist into those of non-agriculturalists 
thus accumulates in towns. Observe towards autumn how 
much wealth is gathered together in villages. Then come 
the demands of taxes, rents, recruiting ; then the temptations 
of vodka, marriages, feasts, peddlers, and all sorts of other 
snares; so that in one way or other, this property, in all its 
various forms (sheep, calves, cows, horses, pigs, poultry, 
eggs, butter, hemp, flax, rye, oats, buckwheat, pease, hemp- 
seed, and flax-seed), passes into the hands of strangers, and 
is taken first to provincial towns, and from them to the capi¬ 
tals. A villager is compelled to dispose of all these in order 
to satisfy the demands made upon him, and the temptations 
offered him ; and, having thus dispensed his goods, he is left 
in want, and must follow where his wealth has been taken; 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


51 


and there he tries to earn back the money necessary for his 
most urgent needs at home ; and so, being partly carried 
away by these temptations, he himself, along with others, 
makes use of the accumulated wealth. 

Everywhere throughout Russia, and I think not only in 
Russia but all over the world, the same thing happens. 
The wealth of country producers passes into the hands of 
tradespeople, land-owners, government functionaries, manu¬ 
facturers ; the men who receive this wealth want to enjoy it, 
and to enjoy it fully they must be in town. In the village, 
in the first place, owing to the inhabitants being scattered, it 
is difficult for the rich to gratify all their desires : you do not 
find there all sorts of shops, banks, restaurants, theatres, 
and various kinds of public amusements. 

Secondly, another of the chief pleasures procured by 
wealth,—vanity, the desire to astonish, to make a display 
before others, — cannot be gratified in the country for the 
same reason, its inhabitants being too scattered. There is 
no one in the country to appreciate luxury ; there is no one 
to astonish. There you may have what you like to embellish 
3 'our dwelling, — pictures, bronze statues, all sorts of car¬ 
riages, fine toilets, — but there is nobody to look at them or 
to envy you ; the peasants do not understand the value of all 
this, and cannot make head or tail of it. Thirdly, luxury in 
the country is even disagreeable to a man who has a con¬ 
science, and is an anxiety to a timid person. One feels uneasy 
or ashamed at taking a milk bath, or in feeding puppies with 
milk, when there are children close by needing it: one feels 
the same in building pavilions and gardens among a people 
who live in cottages covered with stable litter, and who have 
no wood to burn. There is no one in the village to prevent 
the stupid, uneducated peasants from spoiling our comforts. 

And, therefore, rich people gather together in towns, and 
settle near those who, in similar positions, have similar de¬ 
sires. In towns, the eujo}^ment of all sorts of luxuries is 
carefully protected by a numerous police. The chief inhabit¬ 
ants of the town are government functionaries, round whom 
all sorts of master-workmen, artisans, and all the rich 
people have settled. There, a rich man has only to think 
about any thing in order to get it. It is also more agreeable 
for him to live there, because he can gratify his vanity; there 
are people with whom he may try to compete in luxury, 
whom he may astonish or eclipse. But it is especially 


52 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


pleasant for a wealthy man to live in town, because, where his 
country life was uncomfortable, and somewhat incongruous 
on account of his luxury, in town, on the contrary, it would 
be uncomfortable for him not to live splendidly, and as his 
equals in wealth do. 

What seemed out of place there, appears indispensable 
here. Rich people collect together in towns, and, under the 
protection of the authorities, peacefully enjoy all that has 
been brought there by the villagers. A countryman often 
cannot help going to town where a ceaseless round of feast¬ 
ing is going on, where what has been procured from the 
peasants is being spent; he comes into the town in order to 
feed upon those crumbs which fall from the tables of the 
rich; and partly by observing the careless, luxurious, and 
universally approved mode of living of these men, he begins 
to desire to order his own affairs in such a manner that he, 
too, may be able to work less, and avail himself more of 
the labor of others. And at last he decides to settle down 
in the neighborhood of the wealthy, trying by every means in 
his power to get back from them what is necessary for him, 
and submitting to all the conditions which the rich enforce. 
These country people assist in gratifying all the fancies of 
the wealthy: they serve them in public baths, in taverns, as 
coachmen, and as prostitutes. They manufacture carriages, 
make toys and dresses, and little by little learn from their 
wealthy neighbors how to live like them, not by real labor, 
but by all sorts of tricks, squeezing out from others the 
money they have collected, and so become depraved, and are 
ruined. It is then this same population, depraved by the 
wealth of towns, which forms that cit} 7 misery which I 
wished to relieve, but could not. 

And indeed, if one only reflects upon the condition of 
these country folk coming to town in order to earn money 
to buy bread or to pay taxes, seeing everywhere thousands 
of rubles foolishly squandered, and hundreds very easily 
earned, while they have to earn their pence b}' the hardest 
labor, one cannot but be astonished that there are still many 
of such people at work, and that they do not all of them 
have recourse to a more easy way of getting mone}", — by 
trade, begging, vice, cheating, and even robbery. 

But it is only we who join in the ceaseless orgy going on in 
the towns who can get so accustomed to our own mode of 
life, that it seems quite natural to us for one fine gentleman 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


53 


to occupy five large rooms which are heated with such a quan¬ 
tity of firewood as would be enough for twenty families to 
warm their homes, and cook their food with. To drive a 
short distance, we employ two thoroughbreds and two men ; 
we cover our inlaid floors with carpets, and spend five or ten 
thousand rubles on a ball, or even twenty-five for a Christ¬ 
mas-tree, and so on. Yet a man who needs ten rubles in 
order to bu} r bread for his family, or from whom his last 
sheep is taken to meet a tax of seven rubles which he can¬ 
not save by the hardest labor, cannot get accustomed to all 
this, which we imagine must seem quite natural to the poor; 
there are even such naive people as say that the poor are 
thankful to us because we feed them by living so luxuri¬ 
ously. 

But poor people do not lose their reasoning powers because 
they' are poor: they reason quite in the same manner as w T e 
do. When we have heard that some one has lost a fortune 
at cards, or squandered ten or twenty thousand rubles, the 
first thought that comes into our minds is: How stupid and 
bad this man must be to have parted with such a large sum 
without any equivalent; and how well I could have employed 
this mone}’ for some building I have long wanted to get done, 
or for the improvement of my estate, and so on. 

So also do the poor reason on seeing how foolishly we 
waste our wealth; all the more forcibly, because this money 
is needed, not to satisfy their whims, but for the chief neces¬ 
saries of life, of which they are in want. We are greatly 
mistaken in thinking that the poor, while able to reason thus, 
still look on unconcernedly at the luxury around them. 

They have never acknowledged, and never will, that it is 
right for one man to be always idling, and for another to be 
continually working. At first they are astonished at it and 
offended ; then, looking closer into the question, they see that 
this order of things is acknowledged to be lawful, and they 
try themselves to get rid of working, and to take part in the 
feasting. Some succeed in so doing, and acquire similar 
wanton habits ; others, little by little, approach such a condi¬ 
tion ; others break down before they reach their object, and, 
having lost the habit of working, fill the night-houses and the 
haunts of vice. 

The year before last we took from the village a young 
peasant to be our butler’s assistant. He could not agree 
with the footman, and was sent away ; he entered the service 


54 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN ? 


of a merchant, pleased his masters, and now wears a watch 
and chain, and has smart boots. 

In his place we took another peasant, a married man. He 
turned out a drunkard, and lost money. We took a third : he 
began to drink, and, having drunk up all he had, was for a 
long time in distress in a night-lodging-house. Our old cook 
took to drinking in the town, and fell ill. Last year a foot¬ 
man who used formerly to have fits of drunkenness, and who 
when in the village kept himself from it for five years, when 
living in Moscow without his wife, who used to keep him in 
order, began again to drink, and ruined himself. A young 
boy of our village is living as butler’s assistant at my 
brother’s. His grandfather, a blind old man, came to me 
while I was living in the country, and asked me to persuade 
this grandson to send ten rubles for taxes, because, unless 
this were done,'the cow would have to be sold. 

“ He keeps telling me that he has to dress himself respect¬ 
ably,” said the old man. “ He got himself boots, and that 
ought to be enough; but I actually believe he would like to 
buy a watch ! ” 

In these words the grandfather expressed the utmost 
degree of extravagance. And this was really so ; for the old 
man could not afford a drop of oil for his food during the 
whole of Lent, and his wood was spoilt because he had not 
the ruble and a quarter necessary for cutting it up. But the 
old man’s irony turned out to be a reality. His grandson 
came to me dressed in a fine black overcoat, and in boots for 
which he had paid eight rubles. Lately he got ten rubles 
from my brother, ahd spent them on his boots. And my 
children, who have known the boy from his infancy, told me 
that he really considers it necessary to buy a watch. He is 
a very good boy, but he considers that he will be laughed at 
for not having one. 

This year a housemaid, eighteen years of age, formed an 
intimacy with the coachman, and was sent away. Our old 
nurse, to whom I related the case, reminded me of a girl 
whom I had quite forgotten. Ten years ago, during our 
short stay in Moscow, she formed an intimacy with a foot¬ 
man. She was also sent away, and drifted at last into a 
house of ill-fame, and died in a hospital before she w T as 
twenty years of age. 

We have only to look around us in order to become terrified 
by that infection which (to say nothing of manufactories 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN f 


55 


and workshops existing only to gratify our luxury) we di¬ 
rectly, by our luxurious town life, spread among those very 
people whom we desire afterwards to help. 

Thus, having got at the root of that town misery which I 
was not able to alleviate, I saw that its first cause is in our 
taking from the villagers their necessaries and carrying them 
to town. The second cause is, that in those towns we avail 
ourselves of what we have gathered from the country, and, 
by our foolish luxury, tempt and deprave those peasants who 
follow us there in order to get back something of what we 
have taken from them in the country. 


XIV. 

From an opposite point of view to that previously stated, 
I again came to the same conclusion. Recollecting all my 
connection with the town poor during this period, I saw that 
one reason why I was not able to help them was their insin¬ 
cerity and falseness. They all considered me not as an 
individual, but merely as a means to an end. I felt I could 
not become intimate with them : I thought I did not perhaps 
understand how to do so ; but without truthfulness, no help 
was possible. How can one help a man who does not tell all 
his circumstances? Formerly I accused the poor of this,— 
it is so natural to accuse others ; but one word spoken by 
a remarkable man, namely, Sutaief, who was then on a visit 
at my house, cleared up the difficulty, and showed me wherein 
lay the cause of my non-success. 

I remember that even then what he said made a deep im¬ 
pression upon me; but I did not understand its full meaning 
until afterwards. It happened that while in the full ardor 
of my self-deception, I was at my sister’s house, Sutaief 
being also there ; and my sister was questioning me about 
my work. 

I was relating it to her; and, as is often the case when 
one does not fully believe in one’s own enterprises, I related 
with great enthusiasm, ardor, and at full length, all I had 
been doing, and all the possible results. I was telling her 
how we should keep our eyes open to what went on in Mos¬ 
cow ; how we should take care of orphans and old people; 
how we should afford means to impoverished villagers to 
return to their homes, and pave the way to reform the 


56 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


depraved. I explained, that, if we succeeded in our under¬ 
taking, there would not be in Moscow a single poor man who 
could not find help. 

My sister sympathized with me ; and while speaking, I kept 
looking now and then at Sutaief, knowing his Christian life, 
and the importance attached by him to works of charity, I 
expected sympathy from him, and I spoke so that he might 
understand me ; for, though I was addressing my sister, yet 
my conversation was really more directed to him. 

He sat immovable, dressed in his black-tanned sheepskin 
coat, which he, like other peasants, wore in-doors as well as 
out. It seemed that he was not listening to us, but was 
thinking about something else. IIis small eyes gave no re¬ 
responding gleam, but-seemed to be turned inwards. Having 
spoken out to my own satisfaction, I turned to him and asked 
him what he thought about it. 

“ The whole thing is superficial,” he replied. 

“ Why?” 

“ The plan is an empty one, and no good will come of it,” 
he repeated with conviction. 

“How is it that nothing will come of it? Why is it a 
useless business, if we help thousands', or even hundreds, of 
unhappy ones? Is it a bad thing, according to the gospel, 
to clothe the naked, or to feed the hungry ? ” 

“I know, I know; but what you are doing is not that. 
Is it possible to help thus? You are walking in the street; 
somebody asks you for a few kopeks; you give it him. Is 
that charity? Do him some spiritual good: teach him . . . 
what 3 ’ou gave him merely says, ‘ Leave me alone.’ ” 

u No ; but that is not what we were speaking of : we wish 
to become acquainted with the wants, and then help by 
money and by deeds. We will try to find for the poor people 
some work to do.” 

“ That would be no way of helping them.” 

“How then? must they be left to die of starvation and 
cold?” 

“ Why left to die? How many are there of them? ” 

“How many?” said I, thinking that he took the matter 
so lightly from not knowing the great number of these men. 

“ You are not aware, I dare say, that there are in Moscow 
about twenty thousand cold and hungry. And then, think 
of those in St. Petersburg and other towns! ” 

He smiled. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 57 

u Twenty thousand ! And how many families are there in 
Russia alone? Would they amount to a million? ” 

“ Well; but what of that? ” 

“What of that? said he, with animation, and his eyes 
sparkled. “Let us unite them with ourselves; I am not 
rich myself, but will at once take two of them. You take a 
young fellow into your kitchen : I invite him into my family. 
If there were ten times as many, we should take them all into 
our families. You one, I another. We shall work together ; 
those I take to live with me will see how I work; I will teach 
them to reap, and we shall eat out of one bowl, at one table ; 
and they will hear a good word from me, and from you also. 
This is charity; but all this plan of yours is no good.” 

These plain words made an impression upon me. I could 
not help recognizing that this was true ; but it seemed to me 
then, that, notwithstanding the justice of what he said, my 
proposed plan might, perhaps, also be useful. 

But the longer I was occupied with this affair, and the 
closer my intercourse with the poor, the oftener I recollected 
these words, and the greater meaning I found in them. 

I, indeed, go in an expensive fur coat, or drive in my own 
carriage to a man who is in want of boots : he sees my house 
which costs two hundred rubles a month, or he notices that 
I give away, without thinking, five rubles, only because such 
is my fancy ; he is then aware that if I give away rubles in 
such a manner, it is because I have accumulated so many of 
them that I have a lot to spare, which I not only am never 
in the habit of giving to an} T one, but which I have, without 
compunction, taken away from others. What can he see in 
me but one of those persons who have become possessed of 
what should belong to him ? And what other feeling can he 
have towards me but the desire to get back as many as pos¬ 
sible of these rubles which were taken by me from him and 
from others ? 

I should like to become intimate with him, and 1 complain 
that he is not sincere ; but I am afraid to sit down upon his 
bed for fear of lice or some infectious disease ; I am also 
afraid to let him come into my room ; and when he comes to 
me half-dressed, he has to wait,—if fortunate, in the en¬ 
trance-hall, but oftener in the cold porch. And then I say 
that it is all his fault that I cannot become intimate with him, 
and that he is not sincere. 

Let the most hard-hearted man sit down to dine upon 


58 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


five courses among hungry people who have little or nothing 
to eat except black bread, and no one could have the heart 
to eat while hungry people are around him licking their lips. 

Therefore, in order to eat well, when living among half- 
starving men, the first thing necessary is to hide ourselves 
from them, and to eat so that they may not see us. This is 
the very thing we do at present. 

Without prejudice I looked into our own mode of life, and 
became aware that it was not by chance that closer inter¬ 
course with the poor is difficult for us, but that we ourselves 
are intentionalty ordering our lives in such a way as to make 
this intercourse impossible. And not only this; but, on look¬ 
ing at our lives, or at the lives of rich people from without, 
I saw that all that is considered as the summum bonum of 
these lives consists in being separated as much as possible 
from the poor, or is in some way or other connected with this 
desired separation. 

In fact, all the aim of our lives, beginning with food, dress, 
dwelling, cleanliness, and ending with our education, con¬ 
sists in placing a gulf between us and them. And in order 
to establish this distinction and separation we spend nine- 
tenths of our wealth in erecting impassable barriers. 

The first thing a man does who has grown rich is to leave 
off eating with others out of one bowl. He arranges 
plates for himself and his family, and separates himself from 
the kitchen and the servants. He feeds his servants well, in 
order that their mouths may not water, and he dines alone. 
But eating alone is dull. He invents whatever he can to im¬ 
prove his food, embellish his table ; and the very manner of 
taking food, as at dinner-parties, becomes for him a matter 
of vanity, of pride. His manner of eating his food is a means 
of separating himself from other people. For a rich man it 
is out of the question to invite a poor person to his table. 
One must know how to hand a lady to table, how to bow, 
how to sit, to eat, to use a finger-bowl, all of which the rich 
alone know how to do. 

The same holds good with dress. 

If a rich man, in order to cover his body and protect it 
from cold, wore ordinary dress, — a jacket, a fur coat, felt 
shoes, leather boots, an undercoat, trousers, a shirt,—he 
would require very little ; and, having two fur coats, he could 
not help giving one away to somebody who had none. But 
the wealthy man begins with wearing clothes which consist 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


59 


of many separate parts, and can be of use only on particular 
occasions, and therefore are of no use for a poor man. The 
man of fashion must have evening dress-coats, waistcoats, 
frock-coats, patent-leather shoes: his wife, bodices and 
dresses (which, according to fashion, are made of many 
parts), high-heeled shoes, hunting and travelling jackets, 
and so on. All these articles can be of use only to people 
in a condition far removed from poverty. 

And thus dressing also becomes a means of isolation. 
Fashions make their appearance, and are among the* chief 
things which separate the rich man from the poor one. 

The same thing shows itself more plainly still in our dwell¬ 
ings. In order for one person to occupy ten rooms, we must 
manage so that he may not be seen by people who are living 
by tens in one room. 

The richer a man is, the more difficult it is to get at him ; 
the more footmen there are between him and people not rich, 
the more impossible it is for him to receive a poor guest, to 
let him walk on carpets, and sit on satin-covered chairs. 

The same thing happens in travelling. A peasant who 
drives in a cart or on a carrier’s sledge must be very hard¬ 
hearted if he refuses to give a pedestrian a lift; he has 
enough room, and can do it. But the richer the carriage is, 
the more impossible it is to put any one in it besides the 
owner of it. Some of the most elegant carriages are so 
narrow as to be termed “ egotists .” 

The same thing applies to all the modes of living expressed 
by the word “cleanliness.” Cleanliness! Who does not 
know human bein*gs, especially women, who make a great 
virtue of cleanliness? Who does not know the various 
phases of this cleanliness, which have no limit whatever 
when it is procured by the labor of others? Who among 
self-made men has not experienced in his own person with 
what pains he carefully accustomed himself to this cleanli¬ 
ness, which illustrates the saying, “ White hands are fond of 
another’s labor ” ? 

To-day cleanliness consists in changing one’s shirt daily, 
and to-morrow it will be changed twice a day. At first, one 
has to wash one’s hands and neck every day, then one will 
have to wash one’s feet every day, and afterwards it will be 
the whole body, an.d in peculiar methods. A clean table¬ 
cloth serves for two days, then it is changed every day, and 
afterwards two table-cloths a day are used. To-day the 


60 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


footman is required to have clean hands : to-morrow he must 
wear gloves, aud clean gloves, and he must hand the letters 
on a clean tray. 

And there are no limits to this cleanliness, which is of no 
other use to any one except to separate us from others, and 
to make our intercourse with them impossible, while cleanli¬ 
ness is obtained through the labor of others. 

Not only so; but when I had deeply reflected upon this, I 
came to the conclusion that what we term education is a sim¬ 
ilar thing. Language cannot deceive : it gives the right ap¬ 
pellation to every thing. The common people call education 
fashionable dress, smart conversation, white hands, and a cer¬ 
tain degree of cleanliness. Of such a man they sa}’, when 
distinguishing him from others, that he is an educated man. 

In a little higher circle, men by education denote the same 
things, but add playing on the piano, the knowledge of 
French, good Russian spelling, and still greater cleanliness. 

In the still higher circle, education consists of all this, with 
the addition of English, and a diploma from a high government 
establishment, and a still greater degree of cleanliness. But 
in all these shades education is in substance quite the same. 

It consists in those forms and various kinds of information 
which separate a man from his fellow-creatures. Its object 
is the same as that of cleanliness : to separate us from the 
crowd, in order that they, hungry and cold, may not see how 
we feast. But it is impossible to hide ourselves, and our 
efforts are seen through. 

And so I became aware that the cause of the impossibility 
for us rich men to help the town poor was nothing more or 
less than the impossibility of our having closer intercourse 
with them, and that this we ourselves create by our whole 
life, and by all the uses we make of our wealth. I became 
persuaded that between us rich men and the poor there 
stood, erected by ourselves, a barrier of cleanliness and edu¬ 
cation which arose out of our wealth, and that, in order to be 
able to help them, we have first to break down this barrier, 
and render possible the realization of the means suggested 
by Sutaief, to take the poor into our respective homes. 
And so, as I have already said at the beginning of this chap¬ 
ter, I came to the same conclusion from a different point of 
view from that to which the train of thought about town 
misery had led me; viz., the cause of it all lay in our 
wealth. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


61 


XV. 


I began again to analyze the matter from a third and 
purely personal point of view. Among the phenomena 
which particularly impressed me during my benevolent ac¬ 
tivity, there was one, — a very strange one, — which I could 
not understand for a long time. 

Whenever I happened, in the street or at home, to give a 
poor person a trifling sum without entering into conversation 
with him, I saw, or imagined I saw, on his face an expres¬ 
sion of pleasure and gratitude ; and I myself experienced an 
agreeable feeling at this form of charity. I saw that I had 
done what was expected of me. 13ut when I stopped and 
began to question the man about his past and present life, 
entering more or less into particulars, I felt it was impossible 
to give him any thing ; and I always began to finger the money 
in my purse, and, not knowing how much to give, I always 
gave more under these circumstances : but, nevertheless, I saw 
that the poor man went away from me dissatisfied. When I 
entered into still closer intercourse with him, my doubts as to 
how much I should give increased; and, no matter what I 
gave, the recipient seemed more and more gloomy and dis¬ 
satisfied. 

As a general rule, it almost always happened that if, upon 
nearer acquaintance with the poor man, I gave him three 
rubles or more, I always saw gloominess, dissatisfaction, and 
even anger depicted on his fage; and sometimes, after hav¬ 
ing received from me ten rubles, he has left me-without even 
thanking me, as if I had offended him. 

In such cases I was alwa} 7 s uncomfortable and ashamed, 
and feltm 3 T self guilty. When I watched the poor person dur¬ 
ing weeks, months, or years, helped him, and expressed my 
views, and became intimate with him, then our intercourse 
became a torment, and I saw that the man despised me. 
And I felt that he was right in doing so. When in the street 
a beggar asks me, along with other passers-by, for three 
kopeks, and I give it him, then, in his estimation, I am a 
kind and good man who gives u one of the threads which go 
to make the shirt of a naked one : ” lie expects nothing more 
than a thread, and, if I give it, he sincerely blesses me. 

But if I stop and speak to him as man to man, show him 
that I wish to be more than a mere passer-by, and, as it often 


62 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


happened, he sheds tears in relating his misfortune, then he 
sees in me not merely a chance helper, but that which I wish 
him to see, — a kind man. If I am a kind man, then my 
kindness cannot stop at twenty kopeks, or at ten rubles, or 
ten thousand. One cannot be a second-rate kind man. Let 
us suppose that I give him much ; that I put him straight, 
dress him ? set him on his legs so that he can help himself, 
but, from some reason or other, either from an accident or 
his own weakness, he again loses the great-coat and cloth¬ 
ing and money I gave him, he is again hungry and cold, and 
he again comes to me, wdiy should I refuse him assistance? 
For if the end of my benevolent activity was merely the at¬ 
tainment of some definite, material object, such as giving 
him so many rubles, or a certain great-coat, having given 
them I could be easy in my mind; but the end I have in view 
is to be a benevolent man ; that is, to put myself in the 
position of every other man. All understand kindness thus, 
and not otherwise. 

And therefore, if such a man should spend in drink all 
you gave him twenty times over, and be again hungry and 
cold, then, if you are a benevolent man, you cannot help 
giving him more money, you can never leave off doing so 
while you have more than he has ; but if you draw back, 
you show that all you have done before was done by you 
not because you are benevolent, but because you wish to 
appear so to others and to him. And it was from my having 
to back out of such cases, and by ceasing to give, by seem¬ 
ing to put a limit to my kindness, that I felt a painful sense 
of shame. 

What was this feeling, then ? I had experienced it in 
Liapin’s house and in the country, and when I happened to 
give money or any thing else to the poor, and in my adven¬ 
tures among the town people. One case which occurred to 
me lately reminded me of it forcibly, and led me to discover 
its cause. 

It happened in the country. I wanted twenty kopeks to give 
to a pilgrim. I sent my son to borrow it from somebody. 
He brought it to the man, and told me that he had borrowed 
it from the cook. Some da} T s after other pilgrims came, 
and I was again in need of twenty kopeks. I had a ruble. 
I recollected what I ow T ed the cook, went into the kitchen, 
hoping that she would have some more coppers. I said, — 

“ I owe you twenty kopeks : here is a ruble.” 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


63 


I had not yet done speaking when the cook called his wife 
from the adjoining room : u Parasha, take it,” he said. 

I, thinking she had understood what I wanted, gave her 
the ruble. I must tell you that the cook had been living at 
our house about a week, and I had seen his wife, but had 
never spoken to her. I just wished to tell her to give me 
the change, when she briskly bowed herself over my hand, 
and was about to kiss it, evidently thinking I was giving her 
the ruble. I stammered out something aud left the kitchen. 
I felt ashamed, painfully ashamed, as I had not felt for a long 
time. I actually trembled, and felt that I was making a wry 
face ; and, groaning with shame, I ran away from the kitchen. 

This feeling which I fancied I had not deserved, and which 
came over me quite unexpectedly, impressed me particularly, 
because it was so long since I had felt any thing like it, and 
also because I fancied that I had been living in a way there 
was no reason for me to be ashamed of. 

This surprised me greatly. I related the case to my family, 
to my acquaintances, and they all agreed that they also would 
have experienced the same. And I began to reflect: why is 
it that I felt so? 

The answer came from a case which had formerly occurred 
to me in Moscow. I reflected upon it, and understood this 
shame which I have always experienced when I happen to 
give any thing besides trifling alms to beggars and pilgrims, 
which I am accustomed to give, and which I consider not as 
charity, but politeness. 

If a man asks you for a light, you must light a match if 
you have it. If a man begs for three or twenty kopeks, or a 
few rubles, you must give if you have them. It is a question 
of politeness, not of charity. 

The following is the case I referred to. I have already 
spoken about two peasants with whom I sawed wood three 
years ago. One Saturday evening, in the twilight, I was 
walking with them back to town. They were going to their 
master to receive their wages. On crossing a bridge we met 
an old man. He begged, and I gave him twenty kopeks. I 
gave, thinking what a good impression my alms would make 
upon Semyon, with whom I had been speaking on religious 
questions. 

Semyon, a peasant from the province of Vladimir, who 
had a wife and two children in Moscow, also turned up the 
lappet of his kaftan, and took out his purse ; and, after having 


64 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


looked over his money, he picked out a three-kopek piece-, 
gave it to the old. man, and asked for two kopeks back. 
The old man showed him in his hand two three-kopek pieces 
and a single kopek. Semyon looked at it, was about to take 
one kopek, but, changing his mind, took off his cap, crossed 
himself, and went away, leaving the old man the three-kopek 
piece. 

I was acquainted with all Semyon’s pecuniary circum¬ 
stances. He had neither house nor other property. When 
he gave the old man the three kopeks, he possessed six rubles 
and fifty kopeks, which he had been saving up, and this was 
all the capital he had. 

My property amounted to about six hundred thousand 
rubles. I had a wife and children, so also had Semyon. He 
was younger than I, and had not so many children ; but his 
children were young, and two of mine were grown-up men, 
old enough to work, so that our circumstances, independently 
of our property, were alike, though I was in this respect 
even better off than he. 

He gave three kopeks, I gave twenty. What was, then, 
the difference in our gifts? What should I have given in 
order to do as he had done? He had six hundred kopeks ; 
out of these he gave one, and then another two. I had six 
hundred thousand rubles. In order to give as much as Sem¬ 
yon gave, I ought to have given three thousand rubles, and 
asked the man to give me back two thousand; and, in the 
event of his not having change, to leave him these two 
thousand also, cross myself, and go away calmly, conversing 
about how people live in the manufactories, and what is the 
price of liver at the Smolensk market. 

I thought about this at the time, but it was long before I 
was able to draw from this case the conclusion which inevi¬ 
tably follows from it. This conclusion seems to be so un¬ 
common and strange, notwithstanding its mathematical accu¬ 
racy, that it requires time in order to get accustomed to it. 
I could not help thinking there was some mistake in it, but 
there is none. It is only the dreadful darkness of prejudice 
in which we live. 

This, when I arrived at it and recognized its inevitable¬ 
ness, explained to me the nature of my feelings of shame in 
the presence of the cook’s wife, and before all the poor to 
whom I gave and still give money. Indeed, what is that 
money which I give to the poor, and which the cook’s wife 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


65 


thought I was giving her? In the majority of cases it forms 
such a minute part of my income that it cannot be expressed 
in a fraction comprehensible to Semyon or to a cook’s wife, 
— it is in most cases a millionth part or thereabout. I give 
so little that my gift is not, and cannot be, a sacrifice to me: 
it is only a something with which I amuse myself when and 
how it pleases me. And this was indeed how my cook’s 
wife had understood me. If I gave a stranger in the street 
a ruble or twenty kopeks, why should I not give her also a 
ruble? For her, such a distribution of money was the same 
thing as a gentleman throwing gingerbread nuts into a crowd. 
It is the amusement of people who possess much ‘‘fool’s 
money.” I was ashamed, because the mistake of the cook’s 
wife showed me plainly what ideas she and all poor people 
must have of me. “ He is throwing awa} r a ‘ fool’s money ” 
that is, money not earned by him. 

And, indeed, what is my money, and how did I come by 
it? One part of it I collected in the shape of rent for my 
land, wlych I had inherited from my father. The peasant 
sold his last sheep or cow in order to pa} r it to me. 

Another part of my money I received for the books I had 
written. If my books are harmful, and yet sell, the}' can 
only do so by some seductive attraction, and the money 
which I receive for them is badly earned money ; but if my 
books are useful, the thing is still worse. I do not give 
them to people, but say, “ Give me so many rubles, and I 
will sell them to you.” 

And as in the former case a peasant sells his last sheep, 
here a poor student or a teacher does it: each poor person 
who buys denies himself some necessary thing in order to 
give me this money. And now I have gathered much of 
such money, and what am I doing with it? 1 take it to 
town, give it to the poor only when they satisfy all my 
fancies, and come to town to clean pavements, lamps, or 
boots, to work for me in the factories, and so on. And with 
this money I draw from them all I can. I try to give them 
as little as I can, and take from them as much as possible. 

And now, quite unexpectedly, I begin to share all this said 
money with these same poor persons for nothing, but not 
indiscriminately, only as fancy prompts me. 

Why should not every poor man expect that his turn might 
come to-day to be one of such with whom I amuse myself by 
giving them my “ fool’s money ” ? 


66 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


Tims every one regards me as did the cook’s wife. And 
I had gone astray with the notion that this was charity, — 
this taking away thousands witli one hand, and throwing 
kopeks with the other to those I select. 

No wonder I was ashamed. But, before beginning to do 
good, I must leave off the evil, and put myself in a position 
in which I should cease to cause it. But all my course of 
life is evil. If I were to give away a hundred thousand, I 
have not yet put myself in a condition in which I could do 
good, because I have still five hundred thousand left. 

It is only when I possess nothing at all that I shall be able 
to do a little good ; such as, for instance, the poor prostitute 
did who nursed a sick woman and her child for three days. 
Yet "this seemed to me to be but so little ! And I ventured 
to think of doing good! One thing only was true, which I 
at first felt on seeing the hungry and cold people outside 
Liapin’s house, — that I was guilty of that; and that to 
live as I did was impossible, utterly impossible. This alone 
was true. But what was to be done? This question for any 
one interested, I will answer with full particulars, if God 
permit me, in the following chapters. 


XVI. 


It was difficult for me at last to own this ; but when I did 
get thus far, I was terrified at the delusion in which I had 
been living. I had been head over ears in the mud, and I 
had been trying to drag others out of it. 

What is it that I really want? I want to do good ; I want 
to so contrive that no human beings should be hungry and 
cold, and that men may live as it is proper for them to live. 
I desire this ; and I see that in consequence of all sorts of 
violence, extortions, and various expedients in which I too 
take part, the working people are deprived of the necessary 
things, and the non-working community, to whom I also be¬ 
long, monopolize the labor of others. ' I see that this use of 
other people’s labor is distributed thus : that the more cun¬ 
ning and complicated the tricks employed by the man him¬ 
self (or by those from whom he has inherited his property), 
the more largely he employs the labors of other people, and 
the less he works himself. 

First come the millionnaires; then the wealthy bankers, 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


67 


merchants, land-owners, government functionaries ; then the 
smaller bankers, merchants, government functionaries, land- 
owners, to whom I belong ; then shopmen, publicans, usurers, 
police sergeants and inspectors, teachers, sacristans, clerks; 
then, again, house-porters, footmen, coachmen, water-carters, 
cabmen, pedlers ; and then, last of all, the workmen, factory 
hands and peasants, the number of this class in proportion 
to the former being as ten to one. 

I see that the lives of nine-tenths of the working people 
essentially require exertion and labor like every other natural 
mode of living; but that, in consequence of the tricks by 
which the necessaries of life are taken away from these 
people, their lives become every year more difficult, and more 
beset with privations; and our lives, the lives of the non¬ 
laboring community, owing to the co-operation of sciences 
and arts, which have this very end in view, become every 
year more sumptuous, more attractive and secure. 

I see that in our days the life of a laboring man, and 
especially the lives of old people, women, and children, of the 
working-classes, are quite worn away by increased labor, not 
in proportion to their nourishment, and that even the very 
first necessaries of life are not secured to them. I see that 
side by side with these the lives of the non-laboring class, to 
which I belong, are each year more and more filled up with 
superfluities and luxury, and are becoming continually more 
secure : the lives of the wealthy have attained to that degree 
of security of which in olden times men dreamed only in 
fairy-tales,—to the condition of the owner of the magic 
purse with an “ inexhaustible ruble ; ” to such a state when 
a man not only is entirely free from the law of labor for the 
sustenance of his life, but has the possibility of enjoying 
without working all the goods of this life, and of bequeath¬ 
ing to his children, or to any he chooses, this purse with the 
“inexhaustible ruble .” 

I see that the productions of the labor of men pass over 
more than ever from the masses of laborers to those of non¬ 
laborers ; that the pyramid of the social structure is, as it 
were, being rebuilt, so that the stones of the foundation pass 
to the top, and the rapidity of this passage increases in a 
kind of geometric progression. 

I see that there is going on something like that which 
would have taken place in an ant-hill, if the society of ants 
should have lost the sense of the general law, and some of the 


68 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


ants were to take the productions of labor out of the foun¬ 
dations and carry them to the top of the hill, making the 
foundation narrower and narrower, thus enlarging the top, 
and by that means making their fellows pass also from the 
foundation to the top. 

I see that instead of an ideal, as exemplified in a laborious 
life, men have created the ideal of a purse with an “ inex¬ 
haustible ruble.” The rich, I among their number, arrange 
this ruble for ourselves by various artifices ; and, in order to 
enjoy it, we locate ourselves in towns, in a place where noth¬ 
ing is produced, but every thing is swallow r ed up. 

The poor laboring man, swindled in order that the rich 
may have this magic ruble, follows them to town ; and there 
he also has recourse to artifices, either arranging matters so 
that he maj’ work little and enjoy much, thus making the 
condition of workingmen still more heavy, or, not having 
attained to this state, he ruins himself, and drifts into the 
continually and rapidly increasing number of hungry and cold 
tenants of night-houses. 

I belong to the category of those men who, by the means 
of these various devices, take away from the working people 
the necessaries of life, and who thus create, as it were, for 
themselves, the inexhaustible fairy ruble, which tempts in 
turn these unfortunate ones. 

I wish to help men ; and therefore it is clear that, first of all, 
I ought on the one side to cease to plunder them as I am 
doing now, and on the other I must leave off tempting 
them. But I, by means of most complicated, cunning, and 
wicked contrivances practised for centuries, have made my¬ 
self the owner of this said ruble ; that is, have got into such a 
condition that I may, while never doing any thing myself, 
compel hundreds and thousands of people to work for me, 
and am really availing myself of this privileged monopoly, 
notwithstanding that all the time I imagine I pity these men, 
and wish to help them. 

It is as if I were sitting on the neck of a man, and, having 
quite crushed him down, I compel him to carry me, and will 
not alight from off his shoulders, while I assure myself and 
others that I am very sorry for him, and wish to ease his con¬ 
dition by every means in my power except by getting off his 
back. 

Surely this is plain. If I wish to help the poor, that is, to 
make the poor cease to be poor, I ought not to create these 


WHAT MUST WE BO TIIEN f 


69 


same poor. Yet I give money according to my fancy to 
those who have gone astray, and take away tens of rubles 
from men who have not yet done so, thereby making them 
poor, and at the same time making them depraved. 

I his is very clear; but at first it was for me exceedingly 
difficult to understand, without any modification or reserve 
which would justify my position. However, as soon as I 
came to see my own error, all that formerly appeared strange, 
complicated, clouded, and inexplicable, became quite simple 
and intelligible to me ; and the line of conduct which ensued 
became both clear and satisfactory to my conscience by the 
following considerations. 

Who am I that desire to better men’s condition? I desire 
it; and yet I get up at noon, after having played at cards in 
a brilliantly lighted saloon during all the previous night, I, 
an enfeebled and effeminate man, who thus require the help 
and services of hundreds of people, I come to help them ! — 
these men who rise at five, sleep on boards, feed upon cab¬ 
bage and bread, understand how to plough, to reap, to put a 
handle^ to an axe, to write, to harness horses, to sew ; men 
who, by their strength and perseverance and self-restraint, 
are a hundred times stronger than I who come to help 
them. 

What could I have experienced in my intercourse with 
these people but shame? The weakest of them, — a drunk¬ 
ard, an inhabitant of Rzhanoff’s house, he whom they call 
“ the sluggard,”—is a hundred times more laborious than I; 
his balance, so to say, — in other words, the relation between 
what he takes from men and what he gives them, — is a thou¬ 
sand times more to his credit than mine, when I count what I 
receive from others, and what I give them in return. And to 
such men I go in order to assist them. 

I go to help the poor. But of the two, who is the poorer? 
No one is poorer than myself. I am a weak, good-for-noth¬ 
ing parasite, who can only exist in very peculiar conditions, 
who can live only when thousands of people labor to support 
this life which is not useful to any one. And I, this very 
caterpillar which eats up the leaves of a tree, wish to help 
the growth and the health of the tree, and to cure it. 

All my life is thus spent: I eat, talk, and listen ; then I 
eat, write, or read, which are only talking and listening in 
another form; I eat again, and play; then eat, talk, and 
listen, and finally eat and go to sleep : and thus every day is 


70 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


spent; I neither do any thing else, nor understand how to 
do it. And in order that I may enjoy this life, it is necessary 
that from morning till night, house-porters, dvorniks, cooks, 
male and female, footmen, coachmen, and laundresses, should 
work, to say nothing of the manual labor necessary in order 
that the coachmen, cooks, footmen, and others, ma} T have the 
instruments and the articles by which, and upon which, they 
work forme, — axes, casks, brushes, dishes, furniture, glasses, 
wax, shoe-black, kerosene, hay, wood, and food. And all 
these men and women work hard all the day, and every day, 
in order that I may talk, eat, and sleep. 

And I, this useless man, imagined that I was able to bene¬ 
fit others, they being the very same people who were serving 
me. That I did not benefit an}’one, and that I was ashamed 
of myself, is not so astonishing as the fact that such a foolish 
idea ever came into my mind. 

The woman who nursed the sick old man helped him ; the 
peasant’s wife, who cut a slice of her bread earned by her 
from the very sowing of the corn that made it, helped the 
hungry one ; Semyon, who gave three kopeks which he had 
earned, assisted the pilgrim, because these three kopeks 
really represented his labor; but I had served nobody, 
worked for no one, and knew very well that my money did 
not represent my labor. And so I felt that in money, or in 
money’s worth, and in the possession of it, there was some¬ 
thing wrong and evil; that the money itself, and the fact of 
my having it, was one of the chief causes of those evils 
which I had seen before me, and I asked myself, What is 
money? 


XVII. 

Money! What, then, is money? 

It is answered, money represents labor. I meet educated 
people who even assert that money represents labor per¬ 
formed by those who possess it. I confess that I myself 
formerly shared this opinion, although I did not very clearly 
understand it. But now it became necessary for me to learn 
thoroughly what money was. 

In order to do so, 1 addressed myself to science. Science 
says that money in itself is neither unjust nor pernicious ; 
that money is the natural result of the conditions of social 
life, and is indispensable, first, for convenience of ex- 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEM? 71 

change; secondly, as a measure of value; thirdly, for 
saving ; and fourthly, for payments. 

The evident fact that when I have in my pocket three 
rubles to spare, which I am not in need of, I have only to 
whistle, and in every civilized town I obtain a hundred peo¬ 
ple ready for these three rubles, to do the worst, most dis¬ 
gusting, and humiliating act I require; and this comes not 
from money, but from the very complicated conditions of 
the economical life of nations. 

The dominion of one man over others comes not from 
money, but from the circumstance that a workingman does 
not receive the full value of his labor; and the fact that he 
does not get the full value of his labor, depends upon the 
nature of capital, rent, and wages, and upon complicated 
connections between them and production itself, and between 
the distribution and consumption of wealth. 

In plain language, it means that people who have money 
may twist around their finger those who have none. But 
science says that this is an illusion ; that in every kind of 
production three factors take part, — land, savings of labor 
(capital), and labor ; and that the dominion of the few 
over the many, proceeds from the various connections be¬ 
tween these factors of production,—because the two first 
factors, land and capital, are not in the hands of working 
people: from this fact, and from the various combinations 
resulting therefrom, proceeds this domination. 

Whence comes the great power of money which strikes us 
all with a sense of its injustice and cruelty? Why is one 
man by the means of money to have dominion over others? 
Science says, It comes from the division of the agents of 
production, and from the consequent complicated combina¬ 
tions which oppress the workingman. 

This answer has always appeared to me to be strange, not 
# only because it leaves one part of the question unnoticed, 
namely, the signification of money, but also because of the 
division of the factors of production, which to an unin¬ 
formed man will always appear artificial, and not in accord¬ 
ance with reality. It is asserted that in every production 
three agents come into operation,—land, capital, and labor; 
and along with this division it is understood that property 
(or its value in money) is naturally divided among those who 
possess one of these agents ; thus, rent, —the value of the 
ground, — belongs to the land-owner ; interest to the capi¬ 
talist; and labor to the workingman. 


72 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


Is it really so? 

First, is it true that in every production three agencies 
operate? Now, while I am writing this, around me proceeds 
the production of hay. Of what is this production com¬ 
posed? I am told, of the land which produces the grass, of 
capital, — scythes, rakes, pitch-forks, carts, — which are 
necessary for the housing of hay, and of labor. But I see 
that this is not true. Besides the land, there is the sun and 
rain ; besides social order, which has been keeping these 
meadows from damage caused by letting stray cattle graze 
upon them, the prudence of workmen, their knowledge of 
language, and many other agencies of production, which, for 
some unknown reason, are not taken into consideration by 
political economy. 

The power of the sun is as necessary as the land. I may 
instance the position of men in which (as, for instance, in a 
town) some of them assume the right to keep out the sun 
from others by means of walls or trees. Why, then, is this 
sun not included among the agents of production? 

Rain is another means as necessary as the ground itself.. 
The air too. I can picture to myself the position of men 
without water and pure air, because other men assume to 
themselves the right to monopolize these, which are essentially 
necessary to all. Public security is likewise a necessary 
element; food and dress for workmen are similar means in 
production ; this last is even recognized by some economists. 
Education, the knowledge of language which creates the 
possibility of reasonable work, is likewise an agent. I could 
fill a volume by enumerating such combinations, unnoticed 
by science. 

Why, then, are three only to be chosen and laid as a foun¬ 
dation for the science of political economy ? Why are the 
rays of the sun, rain, food, knowledge, not equally recog¬ 
nized? Why only the land, the instruments of labor, and 
the labor itself? Simply because the right of men to enjoy 
the rays of the sun, rain, food, speech, and audience, are 
challenged only on rare occasions; but the use of land, and 
of the instruments of labor, are constantly challenged in 
society. 

This is the true foundation for it; and the division of 
these agents for production, into three, is quite arbitrary, 
and is not involved in the nature of things. But it may 
perhaps be urged, that this division is so suitable to man, that, 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


73 


wherever economical relationships form themselves, there 
these appear at once and alone. 

Let us see whether it is really so. First of all, I look at 
what is around me, — at Russian colonists, of whom millions 
have for long existed. They come to a land, settle themselves 
on it, and begin to labor ; and it does not enter into the mind 
of any one of them, that a man who does not use the land 
could have any claim to it, and the land does not assert any 
rights of its own ; on the contraiw, the colonists conscien¬ 
tiously recognize the communism of the land, and that it is 
right for every one of them to plough and to mow wherever 
he likes. 

For cultivation, for gardening, for building houses, the 
colonists obtain various implements of labor: nor does it 
enter the mind of any one of them, that these instruments 
of labor may bring profit in themselves, and the capital does 
not assert any rights of its own ; but, on the contrary, the 
colonists conscientiously recognize that all interest for tools, 
or borrowed corn or capital, is unjust. 

They work upon a free land, labor with their own tools, or 
with those borrowed without interest, each for himself, or all 
together, for common business ; and in such a community, it 
is impossible to prove either the existence of rent or interest 
accruing from capital, or remuneration for labor. 

Speaking of such a community, I am not indulging my 
fancy, but am describing what has always taken place, not 
only among primitive Russian colonists, but among so-called 
intellectual men, who are not few, and who have settled in 
Russia and in America. 

I am describing what appears to every one to be natural 
and reasonable. Men settle on land, and each undertakes to 
do such business as suits him ; and each, having earned what 
is necessary, does his own work. 

And when these men find it more convenient to labor 
together, they form a workmen’s association ; but neither in 
separate households, nor in associations, will there appear 
separate agents of production, till men artificially and 
forcibly divide them. But there will be labor, and the ne¬ 
cessary conditions of labor, — the sun which warms all, the 
air which men breathe, water which they drink, land on 
which they labor, clothes on the body, food in the stomach, 
stakes, shovels, ploughs, machines, with which men work ; 
and it is evident that neither the rays of the sun, nor the 


74 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


clothes on the body, nor the stakes with which the man 
labors, nor the spade, nor the plough, nor the machine with 
which he works in the workmen’s association, can belong to 
any one else but to those who enjoy the rays of the sun, 
breathe the air, drink the water, eat the bread, clothe their 
bodies, and labor with the spade or with the machine, because 
all this is necessary only for those who make use of it. And 
when men act thus, we see that they act reasonably. 

Therefore, observing the economical conditions which are 
created among men, I do not see that the division into three 
is natural. I see, on the contrary, that it is neither natural 
nor reasonable. But perhaps the setting apart of these three 
does not take place in primitive societies of men; but that 
when the population increases, and cultivation begins to 
develop, it is unavoidable, and we cannot but recognize the 
fact that this division has taken place in European society. 
Let us see whether it is really so. 

We are told that in European society this division of agen¬ 
cies has taken place; that is, that one man possesses land, 
another possesses instruments of labor, and the third are 
without land and instruments. We have grown so accus¬ 
tomed to this assertion that we are no longer struck by the 
strangeness of it. 

If we will but reflect upon this expression, we cannot help 
seeing, not only the injustice, but even the absurdity, of it. 
Under the idea of a laboring man are included the land upon 
which he lives, and the tools with which he works. If he 
were not living on the land, and had no tools, he would not 
be a laboring man. There has never been, and can never be, 
such a man without land and without tools, without scythe, 
cart, and horse ; there cannot be a bootmaker without a 
house for his work standing upon ground, without water, air, 
and tools with which he works. 

If a laborer has no land, horse, or scythe, and a boot¬ 
maker is without a house, water, or awl, then it means that 
some one has driven him from the ground, or taken it away 
from him, or cheated him out of his scythe, cart, horse, or 
awl; but it does not at all mean that there can be a country 
laborer without a scythe, or a bootmaker without tools. 

So you cannot imagine a fisherman remaining on dry land 
without fishing implements, unless he has been driven away 
from the water by some one who has taken away from him 
his necessary implements for fishing; so also we cannot pic- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN ? 


75 


ture to ourselves a workman without the ground upon which 
he lives, and without tools for his trade, unless somebody 
has driven him from the former, or robbed him of the latter. 

There may be such men, hunted from one place to another, 
and such who, having been robbed, are compelled perforce 
to work for another man, and do things unnecessary for 
themselves ; but this does not mean that such is the nature of 
production, and therefore the land and the tools cannot be 
considered as separate agents in the work. 

But if we are to consider as the agents of production all 
that is claimed by other people, and what a workingman 
may be deprived of by the violence of others, why not count 
among them the claim upon the person of a slave? Why not 
count claims on the rain and the rays of the sun? We might 
meet with a man who would build a wall and thus keep the 
sun from his neighbor; another may come who will turn the 
course of a river into his own pond, and by that means con¬ 
taminate its water ; or an individual who would claim a fellow- 
man as his own property; but none of these claims, al¬ 
though they may be enforced by violence, can be recognized 
as a foundation for calculating the agents of production ; and 
therefore it is as equally unjust to consider the exclusive en¬ 
joyment of the rays of the sun, or of the air or water, or the 
persons of others, as separate agents in production. 

There may be men who will assert their rights to the land 
and to the tools of a workingman, as there were men who 
asserted their rights to the persons of others, and as there 
may be men who would assert their rights to the exclusive 
use of the rays of the sun, or to the use of water and air; 
there may be men who would drive away a workingman 
from place to place, taking from him by force the products 
of his labor as they are produced, and the very instruments 
for its production, who might compel him to work, not for 
himself, but for his master, as occurs in the factories; — all 
this is possible : but a workingman without land and tools is 
still an impossibility, just as there does not exist a man who 
would willingly become the property of another, notwith¬ 
standing that men have asserted their right to him for many 
generations. 

Just as a claim on the person of another man could not 
deprive a slave of his innate right to seek his own welfare, 
and not that of his master; so, too, the claim for the ex¬ 
clusive possession of the land and tools of others cannot 


76 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN ? 


deprive the workingman of his right, like that of every man, 
to live upon the land, and to work with his own tools, or 
those of his community, as he considers most useful for 
himself. 

All that science can say in examining the present econom¬ 
ical question, is this: that in Europe there exist claims of 
some men to the land and the tools of workingmen, in con¬ 
sequence of which, for some of these workingmen .(but by 
no means for all of them), the proper conditions of produc¬ 
tion are violated, so that they are deprived of land and 
implements of labor, and are compelled to work with the 
tools of others ; but by no means is it established that this 
casual violation of the law of production is that very law 
itself. 

In saying that this isolation of the agents of produce is 
the fundamental law of production, the economist is doing 
the very thing a zoologist would do, who, upon seeing a great 
many siskins, with their wings cut, and kept in little cages, 
drawing water-barrels out of an imaginary well, would assert 
this was the most essential condition for the life of birds, 
and that their life is composed of these conditions. 

However many siskins there may be kept in pasteboard 
houses with their wings cut, a zoologist cannot acknowledge 
these houses to be the natural home of the birds. However 
great the number of working-people there may be driven from 
place to place, and deprived of their productions as well as 
the tools for their labor, the natural right of man to live 
upon the land, and to work with his own tools, is that which 
he needs, and it will remain so forever. 

We have some who lay claim to the land and to the tools 
of workingmen, just as there existed in former ages the 
claim of some men over the persons of others ; but there may 
be no real division of men into lords and slaves as was an¬ 
ciently established, nor can there exist any division in the 
agents of production, in land and capital, as economists want 
to establish at present. 

These very unlawful claims of some men over the liberty 
of others, science calls the natural condition of production. 
Instead of taking its fundamental principles from the natural 
properties of human societies, science took them from a par¬ 
ticular case ; and, desiring to justify this case, it recognized 
the right of some men to the land by which other men earned 
their living, and to the tools with which other men worked; 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


77 


in other words, it recognized as a right that which had never 
existed, and cannot exist, and which is in itself a contradic¬ 
tion, because the claim of the land-owner to the land on 
which he does not labor, is in essence nothing more than the 
right to use the land which he does not use ; the claim on the 
tools of others is nothing more than a man assuming a right 
to work with implements with which he does not work. 

Science, by isolating the agents of production, declares 
that the natural condition of a workingman — that is, of a 
man in the true sense of the word —is that unnatural condition 
in which he exists at present, as in ancient times, by the 
division of men into citizens and slaves, when it was asserted 
that the unnatural condition of slavery was the natural con¬ 
dition of life. 

This very division accepted by science only in order to 
justify the existing injustice, and the adjudging this division 
to be the foundation of all its inquiries, has for its result 
that science vainly tries to give some explanation of existing 
phenomena ; and denying the clearest and plainest answers 
to the questions that arise, gives answers which have no 
meaning in them at all. 

The question of economical science is this: What is the 
reason of the fact that some men by means of money acquire 
an imaginary right to the land and capital, and may make 
slaves of those men who have no mone} r ? The answer which 
presents itself to common sense would be, that it is the result 
of money, the nature of which is to enslave men. 

But science denies this, and says, This arises, not from 
the nature of money, but from the fact that some men have 
land and capital, and others have neither. We ask why per¬ 
sons who possess land and capital oppress such as possess 
neither? and we are answered, Because they do possess land 
and capital. 

But this is just what we are inquiring about. Is not 
deprivation of land and tools enforced slavery? Life ceases 
not to put this essential question : and even science herself 
notices it, and tries to answer it, but does not succeed in 
doing so ; proceeding from her own fundamental principles, 
she only turns herself round, as in a magic circle. 

In order to give itself a satisfactory answer to the above 
question, science has first of all to deny that wrong division 
of the agents of production, to cease to acknowledge the 
result of the phenomena as being the cause of them ; and she 


78 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


has to seek, first, the more obvious, and then the remoter, 
causes of those phenomena which make up the whole. 

Science must answer the question, What is the reason 
that some men are deprived of land and tools while others 
possess both? or, Why is it that land and tools are taken 
away from persons who labor upon the land, and work with 
the tools? 

As soon as science puts this question to herself, she will 
at once get new ideas which will transform all the previous 
ideas of that sham science, which has been moving in an 
unalterable circle of propositions, as, for instance, the mis¬ 
erable condition of working-people proceeding from the fact 
that it is miserable. For simple-minded persons, it must 
seem unquestionable that the obvious reason of the oppres¬ 
sion of some men by others is this money. But science, 
denying this, says that money is only a medium of exchange, 
which has nothing in common with oppression or slavery. 

Let us see whether it is so or not. 


XVIII. 

Whence comes money? How is it that a nation always 
has money, and under what circumstances is it that a nation 
need not use money? There is a small tribe in Africa, and 
one in Australia, who live as lived the Sknepies and the 
Drevtyans in olden times. 

These tribes lived and ploughed, bred cattle, and culti¬ 
vated gardens. We became acquainted with them only at 
the dawn of history. And history begins with recording the 
fact that some invaders appear on the stage. And invaders 
always do the same thing: they take away from the abori¬ 
gines every thing they can take, — cattle, corn, and stuffs ; 
even make prisoners, male and female, and carry them away. 

After some years the invaders appear again ; but the peo¬ 
ple have not got over the consequences of their misfortune, 
and there is scarcely any thing to take from them, so the 
invaders invent another and better means of making use of 
their victims. 

These means are very simple, and naturally present them¬ 
selves to the mind of every man. The first is personal 
slavery. There is a drawback to this, seeing the enforcers of 
it have to put every thing into working order, and feed all the 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


79 


slaves : hence, naturally, there appears the second. The peo¬ 
ple are left on their own land, which becomes the recognized 
property of the invaders, who portion it out among the lead¬ 
ing military men, in order that by means of these men they 
may utilize the labor of the people. 

But this, too, has its drawback. It is not convenient to 
these officers to have an oversight over all the productions of 
the conquered people, and thus the third means is introduced, 
which is as primitive as the two former ones ; and this is the 
levying of a certain obligator}’ tax which the conquered have 
to pay at stated periods. 

The object of a conquest is to take from the conquered as 
much as possible of the products of their labor. It is 
evident, that, in order to do this, the conquerors must take 
such articles as are the most valuable to the conquered, and 
which at the same time are not cumbersome, and are con¬ 
venient for keeping, — skins of animals and gold. 

And the conqueror lays upon the family or the tribe a tax 
in these skins or gold, which is to be paid at fixed times ; and 
by means of this tribute, he utilizes the labor of the con¬ 
quered people in the most convenient way. 

Almost all the skins and all the gold are taken away from 
their original possessors, and therefore these are compelled 
to sell all they have amongst themselves to obtain gold and 
skins for their masters; that is, they have to sell their prop¬ 
erty and their labor. 

This very thing happened in ancient times, in the Middle 
Ages, and occurs now too. In the ancient world, when the 
subjugation of one people by another was frequent, and 
owing to the equality of men not being acknowledged, per¬ 
sonal slavery was the most widely spread means for compel¬ 
ling the service of others, and was the centre of gravity in 
this compulsion. In the Middle Ages, feudalism — land- 
ownership and the servitude connected with it — partly takes 
the place of personal slavery, and the centre of compulsion is 
transferred from persons to land: in modern times, since 
the discovery of America, the development of commerce, 
and the influx of gold, which is accepted as a universal 
medium of exchange, the tribute in money with the increase 
of the state power becomes the chief instrument for enslav¬ 
ing men, and upon it are now built all economical relation¬ 
ships. 

In “ The Literary Miscellany ” is printed an article by Pro- 


80 


WFIAT MUST WE BO THENf 


fessor Yanjoul, in which he describes the recent history of the 
Fiji Islands. If I were trying to find the most pointed illus¬ 
tration of how in our time the forcible requirement of money 
became the chief instrument of the enslaving of some men 
by others, I could not imagine any thing more striking and 
convincing than this trustworthy history, — history based 
upon documents of facts, which are of recent occurrence. 

In the South-Sea Islands in Polynesia lives a race called 
Fiji. The group on which they live, says Professor 
Yanjoul, is composed of small isles, which all together 
occupy a space of about forty thousand square miles. Only 
half of these islands are inhabited by one hundred and fifty 
thousand natives, and fifteen hundred white men. The 
natives had been reclaimed from a savage state a long 
time ago, and are distinguished among other natives of 
Polynesia by their intellectual capacities ; and the}' appear 
to be a nation capable of labor and development, which they 
have also proved by the fact that in a short period of time 
they became good workmen and breeders of cattle. 

The inhabitants were well-to-do, but in the } 7 ear 1859 
the condition of this new state became desperate: the na¬ 
tives of Fiji, and their representative, Kokab, were in need 
of money. The money, forty-five thousand dollars, w 7 as 
wanted by the Government of Fiji for the payment of a con¬ 
tribution or indemnification, which was demanded of them- 
by the United States of America for violence done by Fijis 
to some citizens of the American Republic. 

For this purpose the Americans sent a squadron, which 
unexpectedly took possession of some of the best islands, 
under the pretext that they would hold them as a guaranty, 
and threatened to bombard and ruin the towns if the indem¬ 
nification were not paid over, upon a certain date, to the 
representatives of America. 

The Americans were among the first colonists who, to¬ 
gether with missionaries, came to the Fiji Islands. They 
chose and (under one pretext or another) took possession 
of the best pieces of land on the islands, and established 
there cotton and coffee plantations. They hired whole 
crowds of natives, binding them by contracts unknown to 
this half-civilized race ; or acted through special contractors 
or purveyors of human merchandise. 

Misunderstandings between such master-planters and the 
natives, whom they considered almost as slaves, were un- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


81 


avoidable : it was some of these quarrels which served as a 
pretext for the American indemnification. 

Notwithstanding their prosperity the Fijis had preserved 
almost up to the present time the forms of so-called natural 
economy, which existed in Europe during the Middle Ages: 
money was scarcely in circulation among the natives, and 
their trade had almost exclusively the character of barter ; 
— one merchandise was exchanged for another, and a few 
social taxes and those of the state were taken out in produc¬ 
tions. What were the Fiji-Islanders with their King Kokab 
to do when the Americans required from them forty-five 
thousand dollars under the most terrible threat in the event 
of non-payment? To the Fijis the very figures appeared to 
be something inconceivable, to say nothing of the money 
itself, which they had never seen in such large quantities. 
After deliberating with other chiefs, Kokab made up his 
mind to apply to the Queen of Pmgland, at first asking her 
to take the islands under her protection, and then plainly 
under her rule. 

But the English regarded this request circumspectly, and 
were in no hurry to assist the half-savage monarch out of his 
difficulty. Instead of giving a direct answer, they sent, in 
I860, special commissioners to make inquiries about the Fiji- 
Islanders, in order to be able to decide whether it was worth 
while to annex them to the British Possessions, and to lay 
out money to satisfy the American claims. 

Meanwhile the American Government continued to insist 
upon payment, and held as a pledge in their de facto domin¬ 
ion some of the best parts, and, having looked closety into 
the national wealth, raised their former claim to ninety thou¬ 
sand dollars, and threatened to increase it still if Kokab did 
not pay at once. 

Being thus pushed on every side, the poor king, unac¬ 
quainted with European means of credit accommodation, in 
accordance with the advice of European colonists, began to 
try to raise money in Melbourne, among the merchants, cost 
what it might, if even he should be obliged to yield up all his 
kingdom into private hands. 

And so in Melbourne, in consequence of his application, a 
commercial society was formed. This joint-stock company, 
which took the name of the Polynesian Company, formed 
with the chiefs of the Fiji-Islanders a treaty upon terms the 
most advantageous to itself. It took upon itself the debt to 


82 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN 9 


the American Government, and pledged itself to pay it by 
several instalments; for this the company received, accord¬ 
ing to the first treaty, one, and then two hundred thousand 
acres of the best land, selected by themselves ; the perpetual 
immunity from all taxes and dues for all its factories, opera¬ 
tions, and colonies, and the exclusive right for a long period 
to establish in the Fiji Islands issuing-banks, with the privi¬ 
lege of printing unlimited number of notes. 

Since this treaty, definitively concluded in the year 1868, 
there appeared in the Fiji Islands, along with their local 
government with Kokab at the head, another powerful 
authority, — a commercial factory, with large estates over all 
the islands, exercising a decided influence upon the govern¬ 
ment. 

Up to this time the wants of the government of Kokab had 
been satisfied with the payment in natural productions, which 
consisted of various duties and a small custom tax on goods 
imported. With the conclusion of the treaty, and the form¬ 
ing of the influential Polynesian Company, the king’s financial 
circumstances had changed. 

A considerable part of the best land in his dominion had 
passed into the hands of the company, his income from the 
land therefore diminished; on the other hand, the income 
from the custom taxes also diminished, because the company 
obtained for itself an import and export of all kinds of goods 
free of custom duties. 

The natives — ninety-nine per ceut of all the population 
— had always been bad payers of custom duties, because 
they scarcely bought any of the European productions, ex¬ 
cept some stuffs and hardware ; and now, from the freeing 
from custom duties, along with the Polynesian Company, of 
many well-to-do Europeans, the income of King Kokab was 
reduced to nil, and he was obliged to take steps to resusci¬ 
tate it if possible. 

He began to consult his white friends as to how he was to 
avert the calamity, and they advised him to create the first 
direct tax in the country; and, in order, I suppose, to have 
less trouble about it. in money. The tax was established in 
the form of a general poll-tax, amounting to one pound for 
every man, and to four shillings for every woman, throughout 
the islands. 

As we have already said, on the Fiji Islands there still ex¬ 
ist a natural economy and a trade by barter. Very few 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


83 


natives possess money. Their wealth consists chiefly of 
various raw productions and cattle; whilst the new tax re¬ 
quired the possession in a family of considerable sums of 
money at fixed times. 

Up to that date a native had not been accustomed to 
any individual burden in the interests of his government, 
except personal obligations ; all the taxes which had to be 
paid, were paid by the community or village to which he be¬ 
longed, and from the common fields from which he received 
his principal income. 

One alternative was left to him, — to try to raise money 
from the European colonists; that is, to address himself 
either to the merchant or to the planter. 

To the first he was obliged to sell his productions on the 
merchant’s own terms, because the tax-collector required 
money at a certain fixed date, or he had even to raise money 
by selling his expected production, which enabled the mer¬ 
chant to take iniquitous interest. Or he had to address him¬ 
self to the planter, and sell him his labor; that is, to become 
his workman: but the wages on the Fiji Islands were very 
low, owing, I suppose, to the exceptionally great offer of 
services. 

They did not exceed one shilling per week for a grown-up 
man, or two pounds twelve shillings a year; and therefore, 
in order merely to get the money necessary for the payment 
for himself, not to speak of his family, a Fiji had to leave 
his house, his family, and his own land, and often go far 
away to another island, and there enslave himself to the 
planter for at least half a year in order to get the one pound 
necessary for the payment of the new tax ; and as for the 
payment of taxes for his whole family, he had to look for it 
to some other means. 

We can understand what was the result of such a state. 
From a hundred and fifty thousand of his subjects, Kokab 
collected in all, six thousand pounds ; and now there began 
a forcible extortion of taxes unknown till then, and a series 
of violent measures. 

The local administration, which had been formerly incor¬ 
ruptible, soon made common cause with the European 
planters, who began to have their own way with the country. 
For non-payment, the Fijis were summoned to the court and 
were sentenced, not only to pay the expenses, but also to be 
sent to prison for not less than half a year. This prison 


84 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


was really the plantations of the first white man who chose 
to pay the tax-money and the legal expenses of the con¬ 
demned. 

Thus the white settlers received cheap labor to any amount. 
First this compulsory labor was fixed at not longer than half 
a year ; but afterwards the bribed judges found it possible to 
pass sentence for eighteen months, and then to renew the 
sentence. 

Very quickl}’, in the course of a few } 7 ears, the picture of 
the social condition of the inhabitants of Fiji was quite 
changed. 

Whole districts, formerly flourishing, lost half of their 
population, and were greatly impoverished. All the male 
population, except the old and infirm, was working away 
from their homes for European planters, in order to get 
money necessary for the payment of taxes, or in consequence 
of the law court. The women on the Fiji Islands had scarcely 
ever worked in the fields; therefore, in the absence of the 
men, all farming was neglected, and went to ruin. In the 
course of a few years, half of the population of Fiji was 
transformed into the slaves of the colonists. 

. In order to ease their situation, the Fiji-Islanders again 
appealed to England. A new petition was got up, sub¬ 
scribed by a great man}' eminent persons and chiefs, praying 
to be annexed to England ; and this was handed to the British 
consul. Meanwhile, England, thanks to her learned expedi¬ 
tion, had time not only to investigate the affairs of the islands, 
but even to survey them, and duly to appreciate the natural 
riches of this fine corner of the globe. 

Owing to all these circumstances, the negotiations this 
time were crowned with full success; and in 1874, to the 
great dissatisfaction of the American planters, England 
officially took possession of the Fiji Islands, and added them 
to its colonies. Kokab died, and his heirs had a small 
pension assigned to them. 

The administration of the islands was intrusted to Sir 
Hercules Robinson, the governor of New South Wales. In 
the first year of its annexation to England, the Fiji-lslanders 
had not had any self-government, but were under the direc¬ 
tion of Sir Hercules Robinson, who had appointed an admin¬ 
istrator for them. Taking the islands into their hands, the 
English Government had to undertake the difficult task of 
gratifying various expectations raised by them. 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


85 


The natives, of course, first of all expected the abolition 
of the hated poll-tax ; one part of the white colonists (the 
Americans) looked w r ith suspicion upon the British rule ; and 
another part (those of English origin) expected all kinds of 
confirmations of their power over the natives, — permission to 
enclose the land, and so on. The English Government, how¬ 
ever, proved itself equal to the task ; and its first act was 
to abolish forever the poll-tax, which had created the slavery 
of the natives in the interest of a few colouists. But here, 
Sir Hercules Robinson had at once to face a difficult dilemma. 

It was necessary to abolish the poll-tax, which had made 
the Fijis seek help of the English Government; but, at the 
same time, according to English colonial policy, the colonies 
had to support themselves ; the}’ had to find their own means 
for covering the expenses of the government. With the 
abolition of the poll-tax, all the incomes of the Fijis (from 
custom duties) did not amount to more than six thousand 
pounds, w r hile the government expenses required at least 
seventy thousand a year. 

And now Sir Hercules Robinson, having abolished the 
money tax, thought of a labor tax ; but it did not yield the 
sum necessary for feeding him and his assistants. Matters did 
not mend until a new governor had been appointed, — Gordon, 
— who, in order to get out of the inhabitants the money 
necessary for keeping him and his functionaries, resolved 
not to demand money until it had come sufficiently into 
general circulation on the islands, but to take from the 
natives their productions, and to sell them himself. 

This tragical episode in the lives of the Fijis is the clearest 
and best proof of what is the true meaning of money in our 
time. 

In this case every thing is illustrated, the first funda¬ 
mental condition of slavery,—the gun, threats, murders, 
and plunder, and lastly, money, the means of subjugation, 
which has taken the place of all other. That which in an 
historical sketch of economical development has to be inves¬ 
tigated during centuries, here when all the forms of monetary 
violence have fully developed themselves, had been concen¬ 
trated into a space of ten years. The drama begins thus: 
the American Government sends ships with loaded guns to 
the shores of the islands, whose inhabitants they want 
to enslave. The pretext of this threat is monetary ; but the 
beginning of the tragedy is the levelling of guns against all the 


86 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN f 


inhabitants, — wives, children, old people, and men, —though 
they have not committed any crime. Your money or your 
life,” — forty-live thousand dollars, then ninety thousand or 
slaughter. But ninety thousand are not to be had. And 
now begins the second act: it is necessary to forego a 
slaughter, which would be bloody, terrible, and concentrated, 
in a short period ; it is necessary to substitute a suffering 
less perceptible which can be laid upon all, and will last 
longer; and the natives with their representative seek to 
substitute for slaughter a slavery of money. They borrow 
money, and the planned means of enslaving men by money 
at once begins to operate like a disciplined army. In five 
years the thing is done, — men have not only lost their right 
to utilize their own land and their property, but also their 
liberty, —they have become slaves. Here begins act three. 
The situation is too painful; and the unfortunate ones are 
told they may change their master, and become slaves of 
another: there is not a thought about freedom from the 
slavery .brought about by the means of money. Aud the 
people call for another master, to whom they give themselves 
up, asking him to improve their condition. The English 
come and see that dominion over these islands gives them 
the possibility of feeding their already too greatly multiplied 
parasites, and the English Government takes possession 
of these islands and their inhabitants; but it does not take 
them in the form of personal slaves ; it does not take even 
the land, nor distribute it among its assistants. 

These old ways are not necessary now: only one thing is 
necessary, — taxes which must be large enough on the one 
hand to prevent the workingmen from freeing themselves 
from virtual slavery, and on the other hand to feed luxuri¬ 
ously a great number of parasites. The inhabitants must 
pay seventy thousand pounds sterling, — that is the funda¬ 
mental condition upon which England consents to free the 
Fijis from the American despotism, and this is just what was 
wanting for the tidal enslaving of the inhabitants. But it 
turned out that the Fiji-Islanders cannot under any circum¬ 
stances pay these seventy thousand pounds in their present 
state. The claim is too great. 

The English temporarily modify it, and take a part of it 
out in natural productions in order that in time, when money 
has come into circulation, they may receive the full sum. 
They do not behave like the former company, whose conduct 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


87 


we may liken to the first coming of savage invaders into an 
uncivilized land, when they want only to take as much as 
possible and then decamp: but England behaves like a more 
clear-sighted enslaver; she does not kill at one blow the 
goose with the golden eggs, but feeds her in order that she 
may continue to lay them. England at first relaxes the reins 
for her own interest that she may hold them forever after¬ 
wards, and so has brought the Fiji-Islanders into that state 
of permanent monetary thraldom in which all civilized 
European people now are, and from which their chance of 
escape is not apparent. 

This phenomena repeats itself in America, in China, in 
Central Asia; and it is the same in the history of the con¬ 
quest of all nations. 

Money is an inoffensive means of exchange when it is not 
collected with violence, or when loaded guns are not directed 
from the seashore against the defenceless inhabitants. As 
soon as it is taken by force of arms, the same thing must 
unavoidably take place which occurred on the Fiji Islands, 
and has always and everywhere repeated itself. 

Such men as consider it their lawful right to utilize the 
labor of others, and who have the means of doing so, will 
achieve this by means of forcibly demanding such sums of 
money as will compel the oppressed to become the slaves 
of the oppressors. 

And moreover, that will happen which occurred between 
the English and the Fijis,—the extortioners will always, in 
their demand for money, rather exceed the limit to which the 
amount of the sum required must rise in order that the 
enslaving may take place more effectually. They will 
respect this limit only while they have moral sense and suffi¬ 
cient money for themselves : the} 7 will overstep it when they 
lose their moral sense or require funds. 

As for governments, the} 7 will always exceed this limit, — 
first, because for a government there exists no moral sense 
of justice; and secondly, because, as we all know, .every 
government is in the greatest want of money, caused by 
wars and the necessity of giving gratuities to their allies. 
All governments are insolvent, and cannot help following a 
maxim expressed by a Russian statesman of the eighteenth 
century, — that the peasant must be sheared of his wool lest 
it should grow too long. All governments are hopelessly in 
debt, and this debt on an average (not taking in considera- 


88 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN f 


tion its occasional diminution in England and America) is 
growing at a terrible rate. So also grow the budgets; that 
is, the necessity of struggling with other extortioners, and of 
giving presents to those who assist in extortion. 

Wages do not increase, not because of the law of rent, 
but because taxes collected with violence exist, in order 
to take away from men their superfluities, so that they may 
be compelled to sell their labor to satisfy them, the utilizing 
of their labor being the aim of raising them. 

And their labor can only be utilized when on a general 
average the taxes required are more than the working-peo¬ 
ple are able to* give without depriving themselves of all 
means of subsistence. The rising of wages would put an 
end to the possibility of enslaving; and therefore, as long 
as violence exists, wages can never rise. This simple and 
plain mode of action by some men towards others, political 
economists term the iron laiv; the instrument by which such 
action is performed, they call a medium of exchange ; and 
money is this inoffensive medium of exchange necessary 
for men in their transactions with each other. 

Why is it, then, that, whenever there is no violent demand 
for money taxes, there has never been, and can never be, 
money in its true signification; but, as among the Fiji- 
Islanders, the Phoenicians, the Kirghis, and generally among 
men who do not pay taxes, as among the Africans, there is 
either a direct exchange of produce or arbitrary standards of 
value, as sheep, hides, skins, and shells? 

A definite kind of money, whatever it ma} T be, will always 
become, not a means of exchange, but a means of ransom¬ 
ing from violence; and it begins to circulate among men 
only when a definite standard is compulsorily required from 
all. 

It is only then that everybody equally wants it, and only 
then it receives any value. 

Further, it is not the thing that is most convenient for 
exchange that receives any value, but that which is re¬ 
quired by the government. If gold is demanded, gold 
becomes valuable: if knuckle-bones were demanded, they, 
too, would become valuable. If it were not so, why, then, 
has the issue of this means of exchange always been the 
prerogative of the government? The Fiji-Islanders, for 
instance, have arranged among themselves their own means 
of exchange ; well, then, let them be free to exchange what 


WHA T MUST WE DO THENf 


89 


and how they like, and you, men possessing power, or the 
means of violence, do not interfere with this exchange. 
But instead you coin money, not allowing any one else to 
do so; or, as is the case with us, you merely print some 
notes, engraving upon them the heads of the tsars, sign 
them with a particular signature, and threaten to punish 
every falsification of them, distribute this money to your 
assistants, and require everybody to give you such money 
or such notes with such signatures, and so many of them 
that a workingman must give away all his labor in order 
to get these very notes or coins ; and then you want to 
convince us that this money is necessary for us as a means 
of exchange. 

All men are free, and none of them oppresses the others 
by keeping them in slavery; but there exist only money 
in society and an iron law, in consequence of which rent 
increases, and wages diminish down to a minimum. That 
half (nay, more than half) of the Russian peasants, in order 
to pay direct and indirect taxes and land taxes, enslave them¬ 
selves to labor for the land-owners, or for manufacturers, does 
not at all signify (which is obvious) ; for the violent collec¬ 
tion of poll-taxes and indirect and land taxes which are paid 
in money to the government and to its assistants, — the land- 
owners, — compels the workingman to be in slavery to 
those who collect money; but it means that this money, 
as a means of exchange, and an iron law, exist. 

Before the serfs were free, I could compel Iv&n to do 
any work; and if he refused to do it, I could send him 
to the police-sergeant, and the latter would give him the rod 
till he submitted. And if I compelled Iv&n to overwork 
himself, and did not give him either land or food, the mat¬ 
ter would go up to the authorities, and I should have to 
answer for it. 

But now that men are free, I can compel Ivdn and Peter 
and Sidor to do every kind of work; and if they refuse to do 
it, I give them no money to pay taxes, and they will be 
flogged till they submit: besides this, I may also make a Ger¬ 
man, a Frenchman, a Chinaman, and an Indian, work for me 
by that means, so that, if they do not submit, I shall not give 
them money to hire land, or to buy bread, because they have 
neither land nor bread. And if I make them overwork them¬ 
selves, or kill them with excess of labor, nobody will say a 
word to me about it; and, moreover, if I have read books on 


90 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


political economy, I shall be strongly persuaded that all men 
are free, and that money does not create slavery ! Our peas¬ 
ants have long known that with a ruble one can hurt more 
than with a stick. But it is only political economists who do 
not want to see it. 

To say that money does not create bondage, is to say that 
half a century ago servitude did not create slavery. Politi¬ 
cal economists say that money is an inoffensive medium of 
exchange, notwithstanding the fact that, in consequence of 
possessing it, one man may enslave the other. Why, then, 
was it not said half a century ago that servitude w r as, in it¬ 
self, an inoffensive medium of reciprocal services, notwith¬ 
standing the fact that by no lawful means could one man 
enslave another? 

Some men give their manual labor; and the work of others 
consists in taking care of the physical and intellectual wel¬ 
fare of the slaves, and in superintending their efforts. 

And, I fancy, some have really said this. 


XIX. 

If the object of this sham, so-called science of Political 
Economy had not been the same as that of all other sciences 
of law, — the justification of violence, — it could not have 
avoided noticing the strange phenomenon that the distribu¬ 
tion of wealth, and the depriving of some men of land and 
capital, and the enslaving of some men by others, depend 
upon money, and that it is only by means of money that 
some men utilize the labor of others; in other words, enslave 
them. 

I repeat it, a man who has money, may buy up and mo¬ 
nopolize all the corn, and kill others with starvation, com¬ 
pletely oppressing them, as it has frequently happened before 
our own eyes on a very large scale. 

It would seem that we ought to look out for the connection 
of these occurrences with money ; but science, with full as¬ 
surance, asserts that money has no connection whatever with 
the matter in question. 

Science says, Money is as much an article of merchan¬ 
dise as anything else which has the value of its production, 
only with this difference, — that this article of merchandise is 
chosen as the more convenient medium of exchange for 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


91 


establishing values, for saving, and for making payments. 
One man has made boots, another has grown wheat, the 
third has bred sheep ; and now, in order to exchange more 
conveniently, they put into circulation money, which repre¬ 
sents the equivalent of labor; and by this medium they 
exchange the soles of boots for a loin of mutton, or ten pounds 
of flour. 

Students of this sham science are very fond of picturing to 
themselves such a state of affairs ; but there has never been 
such a condition in the world. Such an idea about society is 
like the idea about the primitive, prehistorical, perfect hu¬ 
man state, which the philosophers cherished ; but there has 
never existed such a state. 

In all human societies where there has been mone3 T , there 
has been also the violence of the strong and the armed over 
the weak and the defenceless; and wherever there has been 
violence, there the standard of value, —money, —be it what 
it may, — either cattle or hides, or skins or metals, — must 
have lost unavoidably its significance as a medium of ex¬ 
change, and received the meaning of a ransom from violence. 

Without doubt, money possesses the inoffensive properties 
which science enumerates; but these properties it would 
have only in a society in which there was no violence, in an 
ideal state ; but in such a society, money would not be found 
as a general measure of value ; it has never existed, and 
could never exist, in a society which had not come under the 
general violence of the state. 

In all societies known to us where there is money, it re¬ 
ceives the signification of the medium of exchange only 
because it serves as a means of violence. And its chief 
object is to act thus, and not as a mere medium. Where 
there is violence, money cannot be a regular medium of 
exchange, because it cannot be a measure of value. And it 
cannot be a measure of value, because, as soon as in a society 
one man can take away from another the productions of his 
labor, this measure is directly violated. If horses and cows, 
bred by one man, and violently taken away by others, were 
brought to a market, it is plain that the value of horses and 
cows there would no longer correspond with the labor of 
breeding them ; and the value of all other things would also 
change in accordance with this change, and money would not 
determine their value. 

Besides, if one man may acquire by force a cow or a horse 


92 


WHAT MUST WE BO THENf 


or a house, he may by the same force acquire money itself, 
and with this money acquire all kinds of produce. If, then, 
money itself is acquired by violence, and spent to purchase 
things, rnone}" entirely loses its qualit } 7 as a medium of ex¬ 
change. 

The oppressor who takes away money, and gives it for the 
production of labor, does not exchange any thing, but by 
the means of labor takes away all that he wants. 

But let us suppose that such an imaginary and impossible 
state of society really existed, in which, without a general 
violence of the state exercised over men, money is in circu¬ 
lation, — silver or gold serving as a measure of value and as 
a medium of exchange. All the savings in such a society 
are expressed by money. There appears in this society an 
oppressor in the shape of a conqueror. Let us suppose that 
this oppressor takes away the cows, horses, clothes, and the 
houses of the inhabitants, but, as it is not convenient for him 
to be in possession of all this, he will therefore naturally 
think of taking from these men that which represents among 
them all kinds of value, and is exchanged for all kinds of 
things, — money. And at once in this community, money 
will receive for the oppressor and his assistants another 
signification: its character as a medium of exchange will 
therefore cease in such a society. 

The measure of the value of all things will always depend 
upon the pleasure of the oppressor. 

The articles most necessary for him, and for which he 
gives more money, will receive a greater value, and vice versa; 
so that, in a community exposed to violence, money receives 
at once its chief meaning, — it becomes a means of violence 
and a ransom from violence, and it will retain among the 
oppressed people its signification as a medium of exchange, 
only so far as it is convenient for the oppressor. Let us 
picture the whole affair in a circle, thus: — 

The serfs supply their landlord with linen, poultry, sheep, 
and daily labor. 

The landlord substitutes money for these goods, and fixes 
the value of various articles sent in. Those who have no 
linen, corn, cattle, or manual labor to offer, may bring a 
definite sum of money. 

It is obvious, that, in the society of the peasants of this 
landlord, the price of various articles will always depend 
upon the landlord’s pleasure. The landlord uses the articles 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


93 


collected among his peasants, and some of these articles are 
more necessary for him than others: accordingly, he fixes 
the prices for them, more or less. It is clear that the mere 
will and requirements of the landlord must regulate the 
prices of these articles among the payers. If he is in want 
of corn, he will set a high price for a fixed quantity of it, 
and a low price for linen, cattle, or work ; and therefore those 
who have no corn wfill sell their labor, linen, and cattle to 
others, in order to buy corn to give it to the landlord. 

If the landlord chooses to substitute monej’ for all kinds 
of claim, then the value of things will again depend, not 
upon the value of labor, but first upon the sum of money 
which the landlord will require, and secondly upon the 
articles produced by the peasants which are more necessary 
to the landlord, and for which he will allow a higher price. 

The money-claim made b}^ the landlord upon the peasants 
would cease only to have any influence upon the prices of the 
articles when the peasants of this landlord should live sepa¬ 
rate from other people and have no connection with any one 
besides themselves and the landlord ; and secondly, when the 
landlord emplo3 r s money, not in purchasing things in his own 
village, but elsewhere. It is only under these two conditions 
that the prices of things, though changed nominally, would 
remain relatively the same, and money would have the signifi¬ 
cation of a measure of value and of a medium of exchange. 

But if the peasants have any business connections with 
the inhabitants surrounding them, the prices of the articles 
of their produce, as sold to their neighbors, would depend 
upon the sum of money required from them by their landlord. 

(If from their neighbors less money is required than from 
them, then their productions would be sold cheaper than the 
productions of their neighbors, and vice versa.) And again, 
the money-demand made by the landlord upon his peasants 
would cease to have any influence upon the prices of the arti¬ 
cles, only when the sums collected by the landlord were not 
spent in buying the productions of his own peasants. But if 
he spends money in purchasing from them, it is plain that 
the prices of various articles will constantly vary among them 
according as the landlord buys more of one thing than 
another. 

Suppose one landlord has fixed a very high poll-tax, and 
his neighbor a very low one: it is clear that on the estate of 
the first landlord every thing will be cheaper than on the 


94 


WHAT MUST WE I>0 THENf 


estate of the second, and that the prices on either estate will 
depend only upon the augmentation and diminution of the 
poll-taxes. This is one influence of violence upon value. 

Another, arising out of the first, consists in the relative 
value of all things. Suppose one landlord is fond of horses, 
and pays a high price for them : another is fond of towels, 
and offers a high figure for them. It is obvious that on the 
estate of either of these two landlords, the horses and the 
towels will be dear, and the prices for these articles will not 
be in proportion to those of cows or of corn. If to-morrow 
the collector of towels dies, and his heirs are fond of poultry, 
then it is obvious that the price of towels will fall, and that 
of poultry will rise. 

Wherever there is in society the mastery of one man over 
another, there the meaning of money as the measure of value 
at once yields to the will of the oppressor, and its meaning as 
a medium of exchange of the productions of labor is replaced 
by another, that of the most convenient means of utilizing 
the labor of others. 

The oppressor wants money neither as a medium of ex¬ 
change,— for he will take whatever he wants without 
exchange, — nor as a measure of value,—-for he will himself 
determine the value of every thing, — but only for the con¬ 
venience it affords of exercising violence ; and this convenience 
consists in the fact that money may be saved up, and is the 
most convenient means of holding in slavery the majority of 
mankind. 

It is not convenient to carry away all the cattle in order 
always to have horses, cows, and sheep whenever wanted, 
because they must be fed; the same holds good with corn, 
for it may be spoiled; the same with slaves; sometimes a 
man may require thousands of workmen, and sometimes 
none. Money demanded from those w T ho have not got it, 
makes it possible to get rid of all these inconveniences, and 
to have every thing that is required : this is wh} T the oppressor 
wants money. Besides this, he wants money in order that his 
right to utilize another’s labor may not be confined to certain 
men, but may be extended to all men who likewise require it. 

When there was no money in circulation, each landlord 
could utilize the labor only of his ow r n serfs; but when they 
agreed to demand from their peasants money which they had 
not, they were all enabled to appropriate without distinction 
the labor of the men on every estate. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


95 


Thus the oppressor finds it more convenient to press all 
his claims upon another’s labor in the shape of money, and 
for this sole object is it desired. To the victim from whom 
it is taken away, money cannot be of use, either for the pur¬ 
pose of exchange, seeing he exchanges without money, as all 
nations have exchanged who had no government; nor for a 
measure of value, because this is fixed without him ; nor for 
the purpose of saving, because the man whose productions 
are taken away cannot save; neither for payments, because 
an oppressed man will always have more to pay than to re¬ 
ceive ; and if he does receive any thing, the payment will be 
made, not in money, but in articles of merchandise in either 
case ; whether the workman takes goods out of his master’s 
shop as remuneration for his labor, or whether he buys the 
necessaries of life with all his earnings in other shops, the 
money is required from him, and he is told by his oppressors 
that if he does not pay it, they will refuse to give him land 
or bread, or will take away his cow or his horse, or condemn 
him to work, or put him in prison. He can only free himself 
from all this by selling the productions of his toil, his own 
labor, or that of his children. 

And this he will have to sell according to those prices 
which will be established, not by a regular exchange, but 
by the authority which demands money of him. 

Under the conditions of the influence of tribute and taxes 
upon the prices which everywhere and always repeat them¬ 
selves, as with the land-owners in a narrow circle, so also 
with the state on a larger scale (in which the causes of the 
modification of prices are as obvious to us, as it is obvious 
how the hands and feet of puppets are set in motion, to 
those who look behind the curtain and see who are the wire¬ 
pullers) : under these circumstances, to say that money is 
a medium of exchange and a measure of value, is at least 
astonishing. 


XX. 

All slavery is based solely on the fact that one man can 
deprive another of his life, and by threatening to do so 
compel him to do his will. We may see for certain that 
whenever one man is enslaved by another, when against 
his own will, and according to the will of another, he does 
certain actions, which are contrary to his inclination, the 


96 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN f 


cause, if traced to its source, is nothing more nor less than 
a result of this threat. If a man gives to others all his 
labor, has not enough to eat, has to send his little children 
from home to work hard, leaves his family, and devotes all 
his life to a hated and unnecessary task, as happens before 
our own eyes in the world (which we term civilized because 
we ourselves live in it), then we may certainly say that 
he does so only because not to do so would be equivalent 
to loss of life. 

And therefore in our civilized w r orld, where the majority 
of people, amidst terrible privations, perform hated labors 
unnecessary to themselves, the greater number of men are 
in slavery based upon the threat of being deprived of their 
existence. Of what, then, does this slavery consist? And 
wherein lies this power of threat ? 

In olden times the means of subjugation and the threat 
to kill were plain and obvious to all: the primitive means 
of enslaving men consisted then in a direct threat to kill 
with the sword. 

An armed man said to an unarmed, “I can kill thee, as 
thou hast seen I have done to thy brother, but I do not 
want to do it: I will spare thee, — first, because it is not 
agreeable for me to kill thee; secondly, because, as well for 
me as for thee, it will be more convenient that thou shouldst 
labor for me than that I should kill thee. Therefore do 
all I order thee to do, but know that, if thou refusest, I will 
take thy life.” 

So the unarmed man submitted to the armed one; and 
did every thing which he was ordered to do. The unarmed 
man labored, the armed threatened. This was that per¬ 
sonal slavery which appeared first among all nations, and 
which still exists among primitive races. 

This means of enslaving always begins the work; but 
when life becomes more complicated, it undergoes a change. 
With the complication of life, such a means presents great 
inconveniences to the oppressor. He, in order to appropri¬ 
ate the labor of the weak, has to feed and clothe them, 
and keep them able to work, and so the number of slaves 
is diminished: besides, this compels the enslaver to remain 
continually with the enslaved, driving him to work by the 
threat of murdering him. And thus is developed another 
means of subjugation. 

Five thousand years ago (as we find in the Bible) this 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 97 

novel, convenient, and clever means of oppression was dis¬ 
covered by Joseph the Beautiful. 

It is similar to that employed now in the menageries for 
taming restive horses and wild beasts. 

It is hunger! 

This contrivance is thus described in the Bible : — 

Genesis xli. 48 : And he gathered up all the food of the 
seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up 
the food in the cities: the food of the field, which was 
round about every city, laid he up in the same. 

49. And Joseph gathered'corn as the sand of the sea, 
very much, until he left numbering; for it was without 
number. 

53. And the seven years of plenteousness, that was in 
the land of Egypt, were ended. 

54. And the seven years of dearth began to come, ac¬ 
cording as Joseph had said : and the dearth was in all lands ; 
but in all the land of Egypt, there was bread. 

55. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the 
people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto 
all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph ; what he saith to you, 
do. 

56. And the famine was over all the face of the earth: 
And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the 
Egyptians ; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt. 

57. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to 
buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands. 

Joseph, making use of the primitive means of enslaving 
men by the threat of the sword, gathered corn during the 
seven years of plenty in expectation of seven years of 
famine, which generally follow years of plent}^, —men know 
all this without the dreams of Pharaoh, — and then by the 
pangs of hunger he more securely and conveniently made all 
the Egyptians and the inhabitants of the surrounding coun¬ 
tries slaves to Pharaoh. And when the people began to be 
famished, he arranged matters so as to keep them in his 
power forever. 

Genesis xlvii. 13 : And there was no bread in all the land ; 
for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt 
and all the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine. 


08 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


14. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found 
in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the 
corn which they bought: and Joseph brought the money into 
Pharaoh’s house. 

15. And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in 
the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, 
and said, Give us bread : for why should we die in thy pres¬ 
ence? for the money faileth. 

16. And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give 
you for your cattle, if money fail. 

17. And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and 
Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the 
flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses: 
and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year. 

18. When that year was ended, they came unto him the 
second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my 
Lord, how that our money is spent; my lord also hath our 
herds of cattle ; there is not ought left in the sight of my 
lord, but our bodies, and our lands : 

19. Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we 
and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and 
our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, 
that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate. 

20. And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pha¬ 
raoh ; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the 
famine prevailed over them : so the land became Pharaoh’s. 

21. And as for the people, he removed them to cities from 
one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end 
thereof. 

22. Only the laud of the priests bought he not; for the 
priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat 
their portion which Pharaoh gave them : wherefore they sold 
not their lands. 

23. Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have 
bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is 
seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. 

24. And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall 
give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be 
your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for 
them of your households, and for food for your little ones. 

25. And they said, Thou hast saved our lives : let us find 
grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh’s 
servants. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


99 


* 26. And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt 
unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except 
the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s. 

Formerly, in order to appropriate labor, Pharaoh had to 
use violence towards them ; but now, when the stores and the 
land belonged to Pharaoh, he had only to keep these stores 
by force, and by means of hunger compel men to labor for 
him. 

All tbe land now belonged to Pharaoh, and he had all the 
stores (which were taken awa}' from the people) ; and there¬ 
fore, instead of driving them to work individually by the 
sword, he had only to keep food from them, and they were 
enslaved, not by the sword, but by hunger. 

In a year of scarcity, all men may be starved to death at 
Pharaoh’s will; and in a year of plenty, all may be killed 
who, from casual misfortunes, have no stores of corn. 

And thence comes into operation the second means of 
enslaving, not directly with the sword, — that is, by the strong 
man driving the weak one to labor under threat of killing 
him, —but by the strong one having taken awa 3 * from the weak 
the stores of corn which, keeping by the sword, he compels 
the weak to work for. 

Joseph said to tbe hungry men, “I could starve you to 
death, because I have the corn ; but I will spare your life, 
but only under the condition that you do all I order you for 
the food which I will give you.” For the first means of 
enslaving, the oppressor needs only soldiers to ride to and 
fro among the inhabitants, and under threat of death make 
them fulfil the requirements of their master. And thus the 
oppressor has only to pay his soldiers; but with the second 
means, besides these the oppressor must have different assist¬ 
ants for keeping and protecting the land and stores from 
the starving people. 

These are the Josephs and his stewards and distributers. 
And the oppressor has to reward them, and to give Joseph a 
dress of fine linen, a gold ring, and servants, and corn and 
silver to his brothers and relatives. Besides this, from the 
very nature of this second means, not only the stewards and 
their relations, but all those who have stores of corn, become 
participators in this violence, just as by the first means, based 
upon crude force, every one who has arms becomes a part¬ 
ner in tyranny; so by this means, based upon hunger, every 


100 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


one who has stores of provision shares in it, and has power 
over those who have no stores. 

The advantage of this means over the former for the op¬ 
pressor, consists, first and chiefly, in the fact that he need 
no longer compel the workingmen by force to do his will, 
for they themselves come to him, and sell themselves to him ; 
secondly, in the circumstance that fewer men escape from 
his violence : the drawback is, that he has to employ a greater 
number of men. For the oppressed the advantage of it consists 
in the fact that they are no longer exposed to rough violence, 
but are left to themselves, and can always hope to pass from 
being the oppressed to become oppressors in their turn, 
which they sometimes really do by fortunate circumstances. 
The drawback for them is, that they can never escape from 
participating in the oppression of others. 

This new means of enslaving generally comes into opera¬ 
tion together with the old one ; and the oppressor lessens the 
one and increases the other, according to his desires. 

But this does not fully satisfy the man who wishes to have 
as little trouble and care as possible, and to take away as 
much as possible of the productions of labor of as many 
working-people as he can find, and to enslave as many men 
as possible; and, therefore, a third means of oppression is # 
evolved. 

This is the slavery of taxation, and, like the second, it is 
based upon hunger; but to the means of subduing men by 
depriving them of bread, is added the privation of other 
necessaries of life. 

The oppressor requires from the slaves such a quantity of 
money which he himself has coined, that, in order to obtain 
it, the slaves are compelled to sell not only stores of corn in 
greater quantity than the fifth part which was fixed by 
Joseph, but the first necessaries of life as well,— meat, skins, 
wool, clothes, firewood, even their dwellings; and therefore 
the oppressor always keeps his slaves in his power, not only 
by hunger, but by hunger, thirst, cold, and other privations. 

And then the third means of slavery comes into operation, 
a monetary, a tributary one, consisting in the oppressor say¬ 
ing to the oppressed, “ I can do with each of 3 t ou just what 
I like ; I can kill and destroy } T ou by taking away the land by 
which you earn your living; I can, with this money which 
you must give me, buy all the corn upon which you feed, and 
sell it to strangers, and at any time annihilate you by starva- 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEE? 


101 


tion ; I can take from you all that you have,—your cattle, 
your houses, your clothes; but it is neither convenient nor 
agreeable for me to do so, and therefore I let you alone, to 
work as you please; only give me so much of the money 
which I demand of you, either as a poll-tax, or according to 
the quantity of your food and drink, or your clothes or your 
houses. Give me this money, and do what you like among 
yourselves, but know that I shall neither protect nor main¬ 
tain widows nor orphans nor invalids nor old people, nor 
such as have been burned out: I shall only protect the regular 
circulation of this money. This right will always be mine to 
protect only those who regularly give me the fixed number of 
these pieces of money: as to how or where you get it, I will 
not in the least trouble myself.” And so the oppressor dis¬ 
tributes these pieces of money as an acknowledgment that 
his demand has been complied with. 

The second means of enslaving consists in that, having 
taken away the fifth part of the harvest, and collected stores 
of corn, the Pharaoh, besides the personal slavery by the 
sword, receives, by his assistants, the possibility of dominion 
over the working-people during the time of famine, and over 
some of them forever from misfortunes which happen to 
them. 

The third means consists in this: Pharaoh requires from 
the working-people more money than the value of the fifth 
part of corn which he took from them ; he, together with his 
assistants, gets a new means of dominion over the working- 
class, not merely during the famine and their casual misfor¬ 
tunes, but permanently. By the second means, men retain 
stores of corn which help them to bear indifferent harvests 
and casual misfortunes without going into slavery; by the 
third, when there are more demands, the stores, not of corn 
only, but of all other necessaries of life, are taken away from 
them, and at the first misfortune a workingman, having 
neither stores of corn, nor an} 7 other stores which he might 
have exchanged for corn, falls into slavery to those who have 
money. 

For the first, an oppressor need have only soldiers, and 
share the booty with them ; for the second, he must have, 
besides the protectors of the land and the stores of corn, 
collectors and clerks for the distribution of this corn ; for 
the third, he must have, besides the soldiers for keeping 
the land and his property, collectors of taxes, assessors 


102 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


of direct and indirect taxation, supervisors, custom-house 
clerks, managers of money, and coiners of it. 

The organization of the third means is much more com¬ 
plicated than that of the second. By the second, the getting 
in Of corn may be leased out, as was the case in olden times 
and is still in Turkey; but by putting taxes on men, there 
is need of a complicated administration, which has to in¬ 
sure that the taxes are rightly levied. And therefore, by 
the third means, the oppressor has to share the plunder 
with a still greater number of men than by the second; 
besides, according to the very nature of the thing, all those 
men of the same or of the foreign country who possess 
money, become sharers with the oppressed. 

The advantage of this means over the first and second 
consists in the following fact: chiefly that by it there is 
no need of waiting for a year of scarcity, as in the time of 
Joseph, but years of famine are established forever, and 
(whilst by the second method the part of the labor which 
is taken away depends upon the harvest, and cannot be 
augmented ad libitum , because if there is no corn, there 
can be nothing to take) by the new monetary method 
the requirement can be brought to any desired limit, for 
the demand for mouey can alwa} 7 s be satisfied, because the 
debtor, in order to satisfy it, will sell his cattle, clothes, or 
houses. The chief advantage of this means to the oppressor 
consists in the fact that b} T it he can take away the greatest 
quantity of labor and in the most convenient way ; for a 
money-tax, like a screw, may easily and conveniently be 
screwed up to the utmost limit, and golden eggs be obtained 
though the bird that lays them is all but dead. 

Another of its advantages for the oppressor is that its 
violence reaches all those also who, by possessing no land, 
escaped from it formerly by giving only a part of their 
labor for corn ; and now besides that part which they give 
for corn, they must give another part for taxes. A draw¬ 
back for the oppressor is, that he has to share the plunder 
with a still greater number of men, not only with his direct 
assistants, but also with all those men of his own country, 
and even foreign countries, who may have the money which 
is demanded from the slaves. 

Its advantage for the oppressed is only that he is allowed 
greater independence: he may live wherever he chooses, 
do whatever he likes ; he may sow or not sow ; he has not 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


103 


to give any account of his labor; and if he has money, he 
may consider himself entirely free, and constantly hope, 
though only for a time, when he has money to spare, to 
obtain not only an independent position, but even to 
become an oppressor himself. 

The drawback is, that, on a general average, the situation 
of the oppressed becomes much worse, and they are de¬ 
prived of the greater part of the productions of their labor, 
because by it the number of those who utilize the labor of 
others increases, and therefore the burden of keeping them 
falls upon a smaller number of men. This third means of 
enslaving men is also a very old one, and comes into oper¬ 
ation with the former two without entirely excluding them. 

All three have always been in operation. All may be 
likened to screws, which secure the board which is laid upon 
the working-people, and which presses them down. The 
fundamental, or middle screw, without which the other 
screws could not hold, which is first screwed up, and which 
is never slackened, is the screw of personal slavery, the 
enslaving of some men by others under threat of slaughter; 
the second, which is screwed up after the first, is that of 
enslaving men b} r taking away the land and stores of pro¬ 
visions from them, such abduction being maintained under 
threat to murder; and the third screw is slavery enforced 
by the requirement of certain coins ; and this demand is 
also maintained under threat of murder. 

These three screws are made fast, and it is only when one 
of them is tightened that the two others are slackened. For 
the complete enslaving of the workingman, all three are neces¬ 
sary ; and in our society, all three are iu operation together. 
The first means by personal slavery under the threat of mur¬ 
der by the sword has never been abolished, and never will 
be so long as there is oppression, because all kinds of oppres¬ 
sion are based upon this alone. We are all very sure that 
personal slavery is abolished in our civilized world ; that the 
last remnant of it has been annihilated in America and in 
Russia, and that it is only among barbarians that real slavery 
exists, and that with us it is no longer in being. 

We forget only one small circumstance, —those hundreds 
of millions of standing troops, without which no state exists, 
and with the abolition of which all the economical organiza¬ 
tion of each state would inevitably fall to pieces. Yet what 
are these millions of soldiers but the personal slaves of those 


104 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


who rule over them ? Are not these men compelled to do 
the will of their commanders, under the threat of torture and 
death, — a threat often carried out? the difference consisting 
only in the fact that the submission of these slaves is not 
called slavery, but discipline; the only difference being that 
slaves are so from their birth, and soldiers only during a more 
or less short period of their so-called service. 

Personal slaveiy, therefore, is not only not abolished in 
our civilized world, but, under the general system of recruit¬ 
ing, it has become confirmed of late years ; and as it has 
always existed, so it has remained, having only somewhat 
changed from its original form. And it cannot but exist, 
because, so long as there is the enslaving of one man by 
another, there will be this personal slavery too, that which 
under threat of the sword maintains the serfdom of land- 
ownership and taxes. 

It may be that this slavery, that is, of troops, is neces¬ 
sary, as it is said, for the defence and the glory of the 
country ; but this kind of utility is more than doubtful, be¬ 
cause we see how often in the case of unsuccessful wars it 
serves only for the subjugation and shame of the country ; 
but the expediency of this slavery for maintaining that of the 
land and taxes is unquestionable. 

If Irish or Russian peasants were to take possession of the 
land of the land-owners, troops would be sent to dispossess 
them. 

If you build a distillery or a brewery, and do not pay ex¬ 
cise, then soldiers will be sent to shut it up. Refuse to pa} r 
taxes, the same thing will happen to you. 

The second screw is the means of enslaving men by taking 
away from them the land and their stores of provisions. 
This means has also been always in existence wherever men 
are oppressed ; and, whatever changes it may undergo, it is 
everywhere in operation. 

Sometimes all the land belongs to the sovereign, as is the 
case in Turkey, and there one-tenth is given to the state 
treasury. Sometimes a part of the land belongs to the sove¬ 
reign, and taxes are raised upon it. Sometimes all the land 
belongs to a few people, and is let out for labor, as is the 
case in England. Sometimes more or less large portions of 
the land belong to the land-owners, as is the case in Russia, 
Germany, and France. But wherever there is enslaving, 
there exists also the appropriation of the land by the op- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 105 

pressor. This screw is slackened or tightened according to 
the condition of the other screws. 

Thus, in Russia, when personal slavery was extended to 
the majority of working-people, there was no need of land- 
slavery ; but the screw of personal slavery was slackened in 
Russia only when the screws of land and tax slavery were 
tightened. 

In England, for instance, the land slavery is pre-eminently 
in operation, and the question about the nationalizing of the 
laud consists only in the screw of taxation being tightened in 
order that the screw of land appropriation may be slackened. 

The third means of enslaving men by taxes has also been 
in operation for ages; and in our days, with the extension of 
uniform standards of money and the strengthening of the 
state power, it has received only a particular influence. 

This means is so worked out in our days, that it tends 
to substitute the second means of enslaving, — the land 
monopoly. 

This is the screw by the tightening of which the screw 
of land slavery is slackened, as is obvious from the politico- 
economical state of all Europe. 

We have, in our lifetime, witnessed in Russia two trans¬ 
formations of slavery: when the serfs were liberated, and 
their landlords retained the right to the greater part of the 
land, the landlords were afraid that the}' were going to lose 
their power over their slaves ; but experience has shown, that, 
having let go the old chain of personal slavery, they had 
only to seize another, — that of the land. A peasant was 
short of corn ; he had not enough to live on : and the landlord 
had land and stores of corn, and therefore the peasant still 
remained the same slave. 

Another transformation was caused by the government 
screw of taxation being pressed home, when the majority of 
working-people, having no stores, were obliged to sell them¬ 
selves to their landlords and to the factories. The new 
form of oppression held the people still tighter, so that 
nine-tenths of the Russian working-people are working for 
their landlords and in the factories to pay these taxes. This 
is so obvious, that, if the government were not to raise taxes 
for one year only, all labor would be stopped in the fields of 
the landlords and in the factories. - Nine-tenths of the 
Russian people hire themselves out during and before the 
collection of taxes. All these three means have never ceased 


106 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


to operate, and are still in operation ; but men are inclined to 
ignore them, and new excuses are invented for them. 

And what is most remarkable of all is this, that the very 
means on which, at the moment in question, every thing is 
based, that screw which is screwed up tighter than all 
others, which holds every thing, is not noticed so long as it 
holds. When in the ancient world all the economical admin¬ 
istration was upheld by personal slavery, the greatest intellects 
did not notice it. To Plato, as well as to Xenophon and 
Aristotle and to the Romans, it seemed that it could not be 
otherwise, and that slavery was an unavoidable and natural 
result* of wars, without which the existence of mankind 
could not be thought of. So also in the Middle Ages and up 
to the present time, men have not apprehended the meaning 
of land-ownership, upon which depended all the economical 
administration of their time. 

So also, at present, no one sees, or wants to see, that in 
our time the enslaving of the majority of the people depends 
upon taxes collected by the government from its own land 
slaves, taxes collected by the troops , by the very same troops, 
which are maintained by means of these taxes. 


XXI. 

No wonder that the slaves themselves, who have always 
been enslaved, do not understand th’eir own position, and 
that this condition in which they have always been living is 
considered by them to be that natural to human life, and 
that they hail as a relief any change in their form of slavery ; 
no wonder that their owners sometimes quite sincerely think 
they are, in a measure, freeing the slaves by slackening one 
screw, though they are compelled to do so by the over-tension 
of another. 

Both become accustomed to their state ; and one part, — 
the slaves,—never having known what freedom is, merely 
seek an alleviation, or only the change of their condition ; 
the other, —the owners, — wishing to mask their injustice, try 
to assign a particular meaning to those new forms of slavery 
which they enforce in place of older ones: but it is wonder¬ 
ful how the majority of the investigators of the economical 
conditions of the life of the people fail to see that which 
forms the basis of all the economical conditions of a people. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


107 


It would seem that the duty of a true science was to try 
to ascertain the connection of the phenomena and general 
cause of a series of occurrences. But the majority of the 
representatives of modern Political Economy are doing just 
the reverse of this: they carefully hide the connection and 
meaning of the phenomena, and avoid answering the most 
simple and essential questions. 

Modern Political Economy, like an idle, lazy cart-horse, 
goes well only down-hill, when it has no collar-work ; but as 
soon as it has an)’ thing to draw, it at once refuses, pretending 
it has to go somewhere aside after its own business. When 
any grave, essential question is put to Political Economy, 
scientific discussions are started about some matter or other, 
which does not in the least concern the question. 

You ask, How are we to account for a fact so unnatural, 
monstrous, unreasonable, and not useless only, but harmful, 
that some men can eat or work only in accordance with the 
will of other men? 

And you are gravely answered, Because some men must 
arrange the labor and the feeding of others, — such is the 
law of production. 

You ask, What is this right of property, according to 
which some men appropriate to themselves the land, food, 
and instruments of labor belonging to others? You are 
again gravely answered, This right is based upon the pro¬ 
tection of labor,—that is, the protection of some men’s 
labor is effected by taking possession of the labor of other 
men. 

You ask, What is that money which is everywhere coined 
and stamped by the governments, by the authorities, and 
which is so exorbitantly demanded from the working-people, 
and which in the shape of national debts is levied upon the 
future generations of workingmen? And further, has not 
this money, demanded from the people in the shape of taxes, 
raised to the utmost pitch, has not this money any influence 
upon the economical relationships of men, — between the 
payers and the receivers ? And you are answered in all seri¬ 
ousness, Money is an article of merchandise like sugar, or 
chintz ; and it differs from other articles only in the fact that 
it is more convenient for exchange. 

As for the influence of taxes upon the economical condi¬ 
tions of a people, it is a different question altogether: the 
laws of production, exchange, and distribution of wealth, are 


108 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


one thing, but taxation is quite another. You ask whether 
it has any influence upon the economical conditions of a peo¬ 
ple that the government can arbitrarily raise or lower prices, 
and, having augmented the taxes, can enslave all those who 
have no land? The pompous answer is, The laws of pro¬ 
duction, exchange, ancl distribution of wealth is one science, 
— Political Economy; and taxes, and, generally speaking, 
State Economy, come under another head, — the Law of 
Finance. 

You ask finally, Is there no influence exercised upon 
economical conditions by the circumstance that all the people 
are_in bondage to the government, and that this government 
can arbitrarily ruin all men, take away all the productions of 
men’s labor, and even carry the men themselves away from 
their labor into military slavery? You are answered, That 
this is altogether a different question, belonging to the State 
Law. 

The majority of the representatives of science discuss 
quite seriously the laws of the economical life of a people, 
while all the functions and activities of this life are depend¬ 
ent upon the will of the oppressor; whilst, at the same 
time, recognizing the influence of the oppressor as a natural 
condition of the life of a people, they do the same thing 
that an investigator of the economical conditions of the life 
of the personal slaves of different masters would do, were he 
not to consider the influence exercised upon the life of these 
slaves by the will of that master who compels them to labor 
upon this or that thing, and who drives them from one place 
to another, according to his pleasure, who feeds them or neg¬ 
lects to do so, who kills them or leaves them alive. 

A dreadful superstition has been long, and is still, in exist¬ 
ence, — a superstition which has done more harm to men than 
all the most terrible religious superstitions. 

And so-called science supports this superstition with all its 
power, and with the utmost zeal. This superstition resem¬ 
bles exactly the religious one, and consists in affirming, that, 
besides the duties of man to man, there are still more impor¬ 
tant duties towards an imaginary being, which theologians 
call God, and political science the State. 

The religious superstition consists in this: That the sacri¬ 
fices, sometimes of human lives, offered to this imaginary 
being, are necessary, and that they can and ought to be en¬ 
forced by every means, even by violence. The political 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


109 


superstition consists in this : That, besides the duties of man 
to man, there exist still more important duties to an ima¬ 
ginary being; and the offerings, very often, of human lives 
brought to this imaginary being, — the State, — are also 
necessary, and can and ought to be enforced by every means, 
even by violence. 

This very superstition which was formerly encouraged by 
the priests of different religions, is now sustained by so- 
called science. 

Men are thrown into slavery, into the most terrible slavery, 
worse than has ever before existed ; but so-called science tries 
to persuade men that such is necessary, and cannot be avoided. 

The state must exist for the welfare and business of the 
people ; to rule and protect them from their enemies. 

For this purpose the state wants money and troops. 
Money must be subscribed b} T all the citizens of the state. 
And hence all the relationships of men must be considered 
under the conditions of the existence of the state. 

“ I want to help my father by my labor,” sa} T s a common, 
unlearned man. “ I want also to marry ; but instead, I am 
taken and sent to Kazan, to be a soldier for six years. I 
leave the military service. I want to plough the ground, 
and earn food for my family ; but I am not allowed to plough 
for one hundred versts around me, unless I pay money, 
which I have not got, and pay it to those men who do not 
understand how to plough, and who require for the land so 
much money, that I must give them all my labor to procure 
it: however, I still manage to save something, and I want to 
give my savings to my children ; but a police sergeant comes 
to me, and takes from me all I had saved for taxes: I earn a 
little more, and am again deprived of it. All my economical 
activity is under the influence of state demands ; and it ap¬ 
pears to me that the amelioration of my position, and that of 
my brethren, will follow our liberation from the demands of 
the state.” 

But he is told, such reasoning is the result of his ignorance. 

Study the laws of production, exchange and distribution of 
wealth, and do not mix up economical questions with those 
of the state. 

The phenomena which you point to are not at all a con¬ 
straint put upon your freedom ; but they are those necessary 
sacrifices which you, along with others, must make for your 
own freedom and welfare. 


110 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


“ But my son has been taken away from me,” says again a 
common man ; “ and they threaten to take away all my sons as 
soon as the } 7 are grown up: they took him away by force, 
and drove him to face the enemy’s guns into some country 
which we have never heard of, and for an object which we 
cannot understand. 

“And as for the land which they do not allow us to plough, 
and for want of which we are starving, it belongs to a man 
who got possession of it by force, and whom w T e have never 
seen, and whose affairs we cannot even understand. And 
the taxes, to collect which the police sergeant has by force 
taken aw^ay my cow from my children, so far as I know, will 
go over to this same man who took my cow away, and to va¬ 
rious members of committees, and of departments which I do 
not know of, and in the utility of which I do not believe. 
How is it, then, that all these acts of violence secure my 
liberty, and all this evil is to procure good?” 

You may compel a man to be a slave, and to do that which 
he considers to be evil for himself, but you cannot compel 
him to think, that, in suffering violence, he is free, and that 
the obvious evil which lie endures, constitutes his good. 

Yet this seemingly impossible thing has been done in our 
days. 

The government, that is, the armed oppressors, decide 
what they want from those whom they oppress (as in the 
case of England and the Fiji-Islanders) : they decide how 
much labor they want from their slaves, — they decide 
how many assistants they will need in collecting the fruits 
of this labor; they organize their assistants in the shape of 
soldiers, land-owners, and collectors of taxes. 

And the slaves give their labor, and, at the same time, be¬ 
lieve that they give it, not because their masters demand it, 
but for the sake of their own freedom and welfare ; and that 
this service and these bloody sacrifices to the divinity called 
State are necessary, and that, barring this service to their 
Deity, they are free. They believe it because the same had 
been formerly said in the name of religion by the priests, 
and is now said in the name of so-called science,—by 
learned men. 

But one need only cease to believe what is said by other 
men, who call themselves priests or learned men, in order 
that the absurdity of such an assertion may become obvious. 

The men who oppress others assure them that this oppres- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


111 


sion is necessary for the state, — and the state is necessary 
for the freedom and welfare of men ; so that it appears that 
the oppressors oppress men for the sake of their freedom, 
and do them evil for the sake of good. But men are fur¬ 
nished with reason in order to understand wherein consists 
their own good, and to do it willingly. 

As for the acts, the goodness of which is not intelligible to 
men, and to which they are compelled by force, such cannot 
serve for their good, because a reasoning being may consider 
as good only the thing which appears so to his reason. If 
men from passion or folly are driven to evil, all that those 
who are not so driven can do, is to persuade men as to what 
constitutes their real good. You may try to persuade men 
that their welfare will be greater when they are all become 
soldiers, are deprived of land, and have given their whole 
labor away for taxes ; but until all men consider this condition 
to be their welfare, and undertake it willingly, one cannot 
call such a state of things the common welfare of men. 

The willing acceptance of a condition by men is the sole 
criterion of its good. And the lives of men abound with 
such acts. Ten workmen buy tools in common, in order to 
work together with them, and in so doing they are undoubt¬ 
edly benefiting themselves ; but we cannot suppose that if 
these ten workmen were to compel an eleventh, by force, to 
join in their association, the)' would insist that their common 
welfare will be the same for him. 

And so with gentlemen who agree to give a subscription 
dinner at a pound a head to a mutual friend, no one can assert 
that such a dinner will benefit a man wdio, against his will, 
has been obliged to pay a sovereign for it; and so with peas¬ 
ants who decide, for their common convenience, to dig a 
pond. 

For those who consider the existence of such more valu¬ 
able than the labor spent upon it, the digging of it will be a 
common good. But to the one who considers the existence 
of the pond of less value than a day’s harvesting, in which 
he is bellind-hand, the digging of it will appear evil. The 
same holds good with roads, churches, and museums, and 
with all various social and state affairs. 

All such work may be good for those who consider it good, 
and who therefore freely and willingly perform it,— the dinner 
which the gentlemen give, the pond which the peasants dig. 
But the work to which men must be driven by force, ceases 


112 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


to be a common good precisely by the fact of such violence. 
All this is so plain and simple, that, if men had not been so 
long deceived, there would be no need to explain it. 

Suppose we live in a village where all the inhabitants have 
agreed to build aviaduct over the morass which is a danger 
to them. We agree together, and promise to give from each 
house so much in money or wood or days of labor. We 
agree to do this because the making of this road is more ad¬ 
vantageous to us than what we exchange for it; but among 
us there are some for whom it is more advantageous to do 
without a road than to spend money on it, or who, at all 
events, think it is so. Can the compelling of these men to 
make the way make it of advantage to them? Obviously 
not; because those who considered that their joining by 
choice in making the way would have been to their disad¬ 
vantage, will consider it, a fortiori, still more disadvantageous 
when they are compelled to do so. Suppose, even, that we 
all, without exception, were agreed, and promised so much 
money or labor from each house, but that it happened that 
some of those who had promised did not give what they 
agreed on, their circumstances having meanwhile changed, 
so that it is more advantageous for such now to be without 
the road than to spend money on it; or that the}’ have simply 
changed their mind about it, or even calculate that others 
will make the road without them, and that they will pass 
over it. Can the compelling of these men to join in the 
labor make them consider the sacrifices enforced upon them 
their own good? 

Obviously not; because, if such have not fulfilled what 
they have promised, owing to a change in their circumstances, 
so that now the sacrifices for the sake of the road outbalance 
their gain by it, the compulsory sacrifices of such would be 
only a worse evil. But if those who refuse to join in build¬ 
ing the bridge have in view the utilizing of the labor of 
others, then in this case also the compelling them to make a 
sacrifice would be only a punishment on a supposition, and 
their object, which nobody can prove, will be punished be¬ 
fore it is made apparent; but in neither case can the compel¬ 
ling them to join in a work undesired by them be good for 
them. 

And if it be so with sacrifices for a work comprehensible 
by all, obvious and undoubtedly useful to all as a road over 
a morass; how still more unjust and unreasonable is the 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


113 


compelling of millions of men to make sacrifices, the object 
of which is incomprehensible, imperceptible, and often un¬ 
doubtedly harmful, as is the case with military service, and 
with taxes. 

But it is believed that what appears to every one to be an 
evil, is a common good: it appears that there are men, a 
small minority, who alone know what the common good con¬ 
sists in, and, notwithstanding the fact that all other men 
consider this common good to be an evil, this minority can 
compel other men to do whatever they may consider to be 
for the common good. This constitutes the chief supersti¬ 
tion and the chief deceit, which hinders the progress of man¬ 
kind towards the True and the Good. 

The nursing of this superstitious deceit has been the 
object of political sciences in general, and of so-called 
Political Economy in particular. 

Many are making use of it in order to hide from men the 
state of oppression and slavery in which they now are. 

The way they set about doing so is by starting the theory 
that violence, connected with the economy of social slavery, 
is a natural and unavoidable evil, and men thereby are 
deceived, and turn their eyes from the real causes of their 
misfortunes. 

Slavery has long been abolished. It has been abolished 
as well in Rome as in America, and among ourselves ; but 
the word only has been abolished, and not the evil. 

Slaver} 7 is the violent freeing of some men from the labor 
necessary for satisf}’ing their wants, which transfers this 
labor to others; and wherever there is a man who does not 
work, not because others willingly and lovingly work for 
him, but because he has the possibility, while not working 
himself, to make others work for him, there is slavery. 

And wherever there are, as is the case with all European 
societies, men who by means of violence utilize the labor of 
thousands of others, and consider such to be their right, and 
others who submit to this violence considering it to be their 
duty, — there is slavery in its most dreadful proportions. 

Slavery does exist. In what, then, does it consist? In 
that by Which it has always consisted, and without which it 
cannot exist at all, —in the violence of a strong and armed 
man over a weak and unarmed one. 

Slavery with its three fundamental modes of operation,— 
personal violence, soldiery, land-taxes, — maintained by 


114 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THENf 


soldiery, and direct and indirect taxes put upon all the 
inhabitants, and so maintained, is still in operation now as 
it has been before. 

We do not see it, because each of these three forms of 
slavery has received a new justification, which hides its mean¬ 
ing from us. 

The personal violence of armed over unarmed men received 
its justification in the defence of the country from its imagi¬ 
nary enemies, while in its essence it has the one old mean¬ 
ing, — the submission of the conquered to the oppressors. 

The taking away by violence from the laborers of their 
land was justified as a recompense for services rendered to 
an imaginary common welfare, and is confirmed b} T the right 
of heritage; but in reality it is the same depriving men of 
land and enslaving them, which has been performed by the 
troops. 

And the last, the monetary violence by means of taxes, 
the strongest and most effective in our days, had received a 
most wonderful justification. 

The depriving men of the possession of their liberty and 
of all their goods is said to be done for the sake of the com¬ 
mon liberty and of the common welfare. But in fact it is 
the same slavery, only an impersonal one. 

Wherever violence is turned into law, there is slavery. 

Whether violence finds its expression in the circumstance 
that princes with their courtiers come, kill, and burn down 
villages, or in the fact that the slave-owners take labor or 
money for the land from their slaves, and enforce payment 
by means of armed men, or by putting taxes on others, and 
riding armed to and fro in the villages, or in the circumstance 
of a Home Department collecting money through governors 
and police sergeants, — in one word, as long as. violence is 
maintained by the bayonet, there will be no distribution of 
wealth, but it will all be accumulated among the oppressors. 
As a striking illustration of the truth of this assertion, the 
project of Mr. George as to the nationalization of the land 
may serve us. 

Mr. George proposes to recognize all the land as the prop¬ 
erty of the state, and therefore to substitute the* land-rent 
for all the taxes direct and indirect. That is, that every one 
who utilizes the land would have to pay to the state the 
value of its rent. 

What would be the result? The land slavey would be 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


115 




quite abolished within the limits of the state, and the land 
would belong to the state, — English land to England, Ameri¬ 
can to*America, and so on ; so that there would be a slavery 
which would be determined by the quantity of utilized land. 
It might be that the condition of some laborers would im¬ 
prove ; but while a forcible demand for rent remained, the 
slavery would remain too. 

The laborer, after a bad harvest, being unable to pay the 
rgnt required from him, in order not to lose every thing and 
to retain the land, would be obliged to enslave himself to any 
one who happened to have the money. If a pail leaks, there 
must be a hole. On looking to the bottom of the pail, we 
may imagine that water runs from different holes ; but how¬ 
ever many imaginary holes w r e tried to stop from without, the 
water would not cease running. 

In order to put a stop to this leakage, we must find the 
place out of which water runs, and stop it from the inside. 
The same holds good with the proposed means of stopping 
the irregular distribution of wealth, — the holes through 

o 7 o 

which the wealth runs away from the people. 

It is said, Organize workingmen’s corporations, make 
capital social property, make land social property. All this 
is only the mere stopping from the outside of those holes 
from which we fancy water runs away. In order to stop 
wealth going from the hands of workingmen to those of 
non-workingmen, it is necessary to try to find out from in¬ 
side the hole through which this leakage takes place. This 
hole is the violence of armed over unarmed men, the violence 
of troops, by means of which men are carried away from 
their labor, and the land, aud the productions of labor, taken 
away from men. 

As long as there is an armed man with the acknowledg¬ 
ment of his right to kill another man, whoever he may be, so 
long will there also exist an unjust distribution of wealth, — 
in other words, slavery. 


XXII. 


I always wonder at the often repeated words, “ Yes, it is 
all true in theory, but how is it in practice?” As though 
this theory was a mere collection of good words, needful for 
conversation, and not as though all practice — that is, all 
activity of life — was inevitably based upon it. 


116 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


There must have been in the world an immense number of 
foolish theories, if men employed such wonderful reasoning. 

You know that theory is what a man thinks about a thing, 
and practice is what he does. How can it be that a man 
should think that he ought to act in one way, and then do 
quite the reverse? If the theory of baking bread consists in 
this, that first of all one must knead the dough, then put it 
by to rise, then any one knowing this would be a fool to do 
the reverse. But with us it has come into fashion to say, 
“ All this is very well in theory, but how would it be in 
practice? ” 

In all that has occupied me, practice has unavoidably fol¬ 
lowed theory, not mainly in order to justify it, but because 
it cannot help doing so: if I have understood the affair upon 
which I have meditated, I cannot help doing it in the way« 
in which I have understood it. 

I wished to help the needy, only because I had money to 
spare; and I shared the general superstition that money is 
the representative of labor, and, generally speaking, some¬ 
thing lawful and good in itself. But, having begun to give 
this money away, I saw that I was only drawing bills of 
exchange collected by me from poor people; that I was 
doing the very thing the old landlords used to do in com¬ 
pelling some of their serfs to work for other serfs. 

I saw that every use of mone}', whether buying any 
thing with it, or giving it away gratis, is a drawing of bills 
of exchange on poor people, or passing them to others to 
be drawn by them. And therefore I clearly understood 
the foolishness of wdiat I was doing, in helping the poor 
by exacting money from them. 

I saw that money in itself was not only not a good thing, 
but obviously an evil one, depriving men of their chief 
good, labor, and the utilizing of their labor, and that this 
very good I cannot give to any one, because I am myself 
deprived of it: I have neither labor, nor the happiness of 
utilizing my labor. 

It might be asked by some, “ What is there so peculiarly 
important in abstractly discussing the meaning of money? ” 
But this argument which I have opened, is not merely for 
the sake of discussion, but in order to find an answer to 
the vital question, which had caused me so much suffering, 
and on which my life depended, in order to discover what 
I was to do. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


117 


As soon as I understood what riches are, what money 
is, at once it became plain and unquestionable to me what 
all men must do. In reality I merely came to realize what I 
have long known,—that truth which has been transmitted 
to men from the oldest times, by Buddha, by Isaiah, by 
Laotse, and by Socrates, and particularly clearly and defini¬ 
tively by Jesus Christ, and his predecessor John the 
Baptist. 

John the Baptist, in answer to men’s question, u What 
shall we do then?” answered plainly and briefly, “He 
that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; 
and he that hath meat, let him do likewise” (Luke iii. 
10 , 11 ). 

The same thing, and with still greater clearness, said 
Christ, — blessing the poor, and uttering woes on the rich. 
He said that no man can serve God and mammon. 

He forbade his disciples not only to take money, but 
also to have two coats. He said to the rich young man 
that he could not enter into the kingdom of God, because 
he was rich, and that it is easier for a camel to go through 
the needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of God. 

He said that he who would not leave every thing — his 
houses and children and his fields — in order to follow him, 
was not his disciple. He spoke a parable about a rich man 
who had done nothing wrong (like our own rich people), 
but merely dressed well, ate and drank well, yet by this 
lost his own soul; and about a beggar named Lazarus, 
who had done nothing good, and who had saved his soul 
by his beggar’s life. 

This truth had long been known to me ; but the false 
teaching of the world had so cunningly hidden it, that it 
became a theory in the sense which men like to attach to 
this word, — that is, a pure abstraction. But as soon as I 
succeeded in pulling down in my consciousness the sophistry 
of the world’s teaching, then theory became one with 
practice, and the reality of my life became its unavoidable 
result. 

I understood that man, besides living for his own good, 
must work for the good of others ; that if we were to draw 
our comparison from the world of animals, as somer men 
are so fond of doing in justifying violence and contest by 
the law of the struggle for existence, we must take this 


118 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


comparison also from the lives of social animals like bees; 
and therefore man, saying nothing of his love to his neigh¬ 
bors, incumbent upon him, as well b} r reason as by his 
very nature, is called upon to serve his fellows and their 
common object. 

I understood that this is the natural law of man, by 
fulfilling which he can alone fulfil his calling, and therefore 
be happy. I understood that this law has been, and is 
being, violated by the fact that men b} T violence (as robber- 
bees) free themselves from labor, and utilize the labor of 
others, using this labor not for the common purpose, but 
for the personal satisfaction of their constantly increasing 
lusts, and also, like 'robber-bees, they perish thereb}*. I 
understood that the misfortune of men comes from the 
slavery in which some men are kept by others. I understood 
that this slavery is brought about in our days by the violence 
of military force, by the appropriation of land, and by the 
exaction of money. 

And, having understood the meaning of all these three 
instruments of modern slavery, I could not help desiring to 
free myself from any share in it. 

When I was a landlord, possessing serfs, and came to 
understand the immorality of such a position, I, along with 
other men who had understood the same thing, tried to free 
myself from it. Failing to do so, I endeavored to assert my 
claims as a slave-owner as little as possible, and to live, and 
to let other people live, as if such claims did not exist, and 
at the same time, by trying every means, to suggest to other 
slave-owners the unlawfulness and inhumanity of their im¬ 
aginary rights. 

I cannot help doing the same now with reference to exist¬ 
ent slavery; that is, I try as little as possible to assert my 
claims while I am unable to free m} T self from such power 
of claim which gives me land-ownership and money,, raised 
by the violence of military force, and at the same time by 
all means in my power to try to suggest to other men the 
unlawfulness and inhumanity of these imaginary rights. 

The share in enslaving men, from the stand-point of a 
slave-owner, consists in utilizing the labor of others : it is 
quite the same, whether the enslaving is based upon a claim 
to the person of the slave, or upon the possession of land 
or money. And therefore, if a man really does not like 
slavery, and does not desire to be a partaker in it, the first 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 119 

thing which he must do is this: neither utilize men’s labor 
by serving the government, nor possess land or money. 

The refusal of all the means in use for utilizing another’s 
labor will unavoidably bring such a man to the necessity, on 
the one hand, of lessening his wants, and, on the other, of 
doing himself what formerly was done for him by others. 
And this so simple inference at once puts an end to all three 
causes which prevent our helping the poor, which I discov¬ 
ered in seeking the cause of my non-success. 

The first cause was the accumulation of people in towns, 
and the absorption there of the productions of the country. 

All that a man needs is not to desire to utilize another’s 
labor by serving the government, possessing land and money, 
and then, according to his strength and ability, to satisfy 
unaided his own wants, and the idea of leaving his village 
would never enter his mind, because in the country it is easier 
for him personally to satisfy his wants, while in a town every 
thing is the production of the labor of others ; in the coun¬ 
try a man will always be able to help the need}', and will not 
experience that feeling of being useless, which I felt in the 
town when I wanted to help men, not with my own, but with 
other men’s labors. 

The second cause was the estrangement between the poor 
and the rich. A man need only not desire to utilize other 
men’s labor by serving the government, possessing land and 
money, and he would be compelled himself to satisfy his 
wants, and at once involuntarily that barrier would be pushed 
down which separates him from the working-people, and he 
would be one with the people, standing shoulder to shoulder 
with them, and seeing the possibility of helping them. 

The third cause was shame, based upon the consciousness 
of the immorality of possessing money with which I wanted 
to help others. A man needs only not to desire to utilize 
another man’s labor by serving the government, possessing 
land and money, and he will never have that superfluous 
“ fool’s money,” the fact of possessing which made those 
who wanted money ask me for pecuniary assistance, which I 
was not able to satisfy, and called forth in me the conscious¬ 
ness of my unrighteousness. 


120 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


XXIII. 

I saw that the cause of the sufferings and depravity of 
men lies in the fact that some men are in bondage to others; 
and therefore I came to the obvious conclusion, that if I want 
to help men, I have first of all to leave off causing those very 
misfortunes which I want to remedy, — in other words, I 
must not share in the enslaving of men. 

I was led to the enslaving of men by the circumstance 
that from my infancy I had been accustomed not to work, 
but to utilize the labor of others, and I have been living in 
a society which is not only accustomed to this slavery, but 
justifies it by all kinds of sophistry, clever and foolish. 

I came to the following simple conclusion, that, in order 
to avoid causing the sufferings and depravity of men, I ought 
to make other men work for me as little as possible, and to 
work nryself as much as possible. 

It was by this roundabout way that I arrived at the inevi¬ 
table conclusion to which the Chinese arrived some thousand 
years ago, and which they express thus: “ If there is one 
idle man, there must be another who is starving.” 

I came to that simple and natural conclusion, that if I pity 
the exhausted horse on whose back 1 ride, the first thing for 
me to do, if I really pity him, is to get off him, and walk. 
This answer, which gives such complete satisfaction to the 
moral sense, has been always before my eyes, as it is before 
the eyes of every one, but we do not all see it. 

In seeking to heal our social diseases we look everywhere, — 
in the governmental, anti-governmental, scientific, and phil¬ 
anthropic superstitions, — and yet we do not see that which 
meets the eyes of every one. We fill our drains with filth, 
and require other men to clean them, and pretend to be very 
sorry for them, and we want to ease their work, and are in¬ 
venting all sorts of devices except one, the simplest; namely, 
that we should ourselves remove our slops so long as we find 
it necessaiy to produce them in our rooms. 

For one who really suffers from the sufferings of other 
men surrounding him, there exists a most clear, simple, and 
easy means, the only one sufficient to heal this evil, and to 
confer a sense of the lawfulness of one’s life. This means is 
that which John the Baptist recommended wheu he answered 
the question, “What shall we do then?” and which was 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


121 


confirmed by Christ, not to have more than one coat, and 
not to possess money,— that is, not to profit by another man’s 
labor ; and in order not to utilize another’s labor, we must do 
with our own hands all that we can do. This is so plain and 
simple ! But this is plain and simple and clear, only when 
our wants are also plain, and when we ourselves are still 
sound, and not corrupted to the backbone by idleness and 
laziness. 

I live in a village, lie by the stove, and tell my neighbor, 
who is my debtor, to light it. It is obvious that I am lazy, 
take my neighbor away from his own work, and I at last feel* 
ashamed of it; and besides, it grows dull for me to be always 
lying down when my muscles are strong, and accustomed to 
work, and I go to fetch the wood myself. 

But slavery of all kinds has been going on so long, so 
many artificial wants have grown about it, so man} 7 people 
with different degrees of familiarity with these wants are in¬ 
terwoven one with another, through so many generations 
men have been spoiled and made effeminate, such compli¬ 
cated temptations and justifications of luxury and idleness 
have been invented by men, that for one who stands on the 
top of the pyramid of idle men, it is not at all so easy to 
understand his sin as it is for the peasant, who compels his 
neighbor to light his stove. 

Men who stand at the top find it most difficult to under¬ 
stand what is required of them. They become giddy from 
the height of the structure of lies on which they stand when 
they look at that spot on the earth to which they must de¬ 
scend, in order to begin to live, not righteously, but only not 
quite inhumanly ; and that is why this plain and clear truth 
appears to these men so strange. 

A man who etnploys ten servants in livery, coachmen and 
cooks, who has pictures and pianos, must certainly regard 
as strange and even ridiculous the simple preliminary duty 
of, I do not say a good man, but of every man who is not a 
beast, to hew that wood with which his food is cooked and 
by which he is warmed ; to clean those boots in which he 
carelessly stepped into the mud; to bring that water with 
which he keeps himself clean, and to carry away those slops 
in which he has w'ashed himself. 

But besides the estrangement of men from the truth, there 
is another cause which hinders men from seeing the duty of 
doing the most simple and natural physical work ; that is 


122 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


the complicity and interweaving of the conditions in which a 
rich man lives. 

This morning I entered the corridor in which the stoves are 
heated. A peasant was heating the stove which warmed my 
son’s room. I entered his bedroom : he was asleep, and it 
was eleven o’clock in the morning. The excuse was, “ To¬ 
day is a holiday ; no lessons.” A stout lad of eighteen years 
of age, having over-eaten himself the previous night, is sleep¬ 
ing until eleven o’clock; and a peasant of his age, who had 
already that morning done a quantity of work, was now light¬ 
ning the tenth stove. “It would be better, perhaps, if the 
peasant did not light the stove to warm this stout, lazy fel¬ 
low ! ” thought I; but I remembered at once that this stove 
also warmed the room of our housekeeper, a woman of forty 
years of age, who had been working the night before till 
three o’clock in the morning, to prepare every thing for the 
supper which my son ate ; and then she put away the dishes, 
and, notwithstanding this, got up at seven. 

She cannot heat the stove herself: she has no time for 
that. The peasant is heating the stove for her too. And 
under her name my lazy fellow was being warmed. 

True, the advantages of all are interwoven; but without 
much consideration the conscience of each will say, On whose 
side is the labor, and on whose the idleness? But not only 
does conscience tell this, the account-book also tells it: the 
more money one spends, the more people work. The less 
one spends, the more one works one’s self. M} t luxurious life 
gives means of living to others. Where should my old 
footman go, if I were to discharge him? What! every one 
must do every thing for himself? Make his coat as well as 
hew his wood? And how about division of labor? And 
industry and social undertakings? And, last of all, come 
the most horrible of words, — civilization, science, art! 


XXIV. 

Last March I was returning home late in the evening. 
On turning into a by-lane, I perceived on the snow, in a 
distant field, some black shadows. I should not have noticed 
this, but for the policeman, who stood at the end of the lane, 
and cried in the direction of the shadows, “Vasili, why 
don’t you come along? ” 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


123 


“ She won’t move,” answered a voice ; and thereupon the 
shadows came towards the policeman. I stopped and asked 
him, — 

“ What is the matter? ” 

He said, “We have got some girls from Rzhanoff’s house, 
and are taking them to the police-station ; and one of them 
lags behind, and won’t come along.” 

A night-watchman in sheepskin coat appeared now, leading 
a girl, who slouched along, while he prodded her from 
behind. I, the watchman and the policeman, were wearing 
winter-coats : she alone had none, having only her gown on. 
In the dark, I could distinguish only a brown dress, and 
a kerchief round her head and neck. She was short, like 
most starvelings, and had a broad, clumsy figure. 

“We aren’t going to stay here all night for you, you hag! 
Get on, or I’ll give it you!” shouted the policeman. He 
was evidently fatigued, and tired of her. She walked some 
paces, and stopped again. 

The old watchman, a good-natured man (I knew him), 
pulled her by the hand. “ I’ll wake you up ! come along ! ” 
said he, pretending to be angry. She staggered, and began 
to speak, with a creaking, hoarse voice, “Let me be; 
don’t you push. I’ll get on myself.” 

“ You’ll be frozen to death,” he returned. 

“ A girl like me won’t be frozen : I’ve lots of hot blood.” 

She meant it as a joke, but her words sounded like a curse. 
By a lamp, which stood not far from the gate of my house, 
she stopped again, leaned back against the paling, and began 
to seek for something among her petticoats with awkward, 
frozen hands. They again shouted to her; but she only 
muttered, and continued searching. She held in one hand a 
crumpled cigarette, and matches in the other. I remained 
behind her: I was ashamed to pass by, or to stay and look 
at her. But I made up my mind, and came up to her. She 
leaned with her shoulder against the paling, and vainly tried 
to light a match on it. 

I looked narrowly at her face. She was indeed a starveling, 
and appeared to me to be a woman of about thirty. Her 
complexion was dirty ; her eyes small, dim, and bleared with 
drinking; she had a squat nose; her lips were wry and 
slavering, with downcast angles ; from under her kerchief 
fell a tuft of dry hair. Her figure was long and flat; her 
arms and legs short. 


124 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


I stopped in front of her. She looked at me and smiled, 
as if she knew all that I was thinking about. I felt that I 
ought to say something to her. I wanted to show her that 
I pitied her. 

“Have you parents? ” I asked. She laughed hoarsely, 
then suddenly stopped, and, lifting her brows, began to look 
at me steadfastly. 

“ Have you parents? ” I repeated. 

She smiled with a grimace which seemed to say, “ What 
a question for him to put! ’’ 

“ I have a mother,” she said at last; “ but what’s that to 
you?” 

“ And how old are you? ” 

“ I am over fifteen,” said she, at once answering a ques¬ 
tion she was accustomed to hear. 

“ Come, come ! go on ; we shall all be frozen for you ; the 
deuce take you ! ” shouted the policeman ; and she edged off 
from the paling, and staggered on along the lane to the police- 
station : and I turned to the gate, and entered my house, and 
asked whether my daughters were at home. I was told that 
they had been to an evening party, had enjoyed themselves 
much, and now were asleep. 

The next morning I was about to go to the police-station 
to inquire what had become of this unhappy girl; and I was 
ready to start early enough, when one of those unfortunate 
men called, who from weakness have dropped out of the 
gentlemanly line of life to which they have been accustomed, 
and who rise and fall by turns. I had been acquainted with 
him three years. During this time he had several times sold 
every thing he had,—even his clothes; and, having just 
done so again, he passed his nights temporarily in Rzhanoff’s 
house, and his days at my lodgings. He met me as I was 
going out, and, without listening to me, began at once to tell 
me what had happened at Rzhanoff’s house the night before. 

He began to relate it, yet had not got through one-lialf 
when, all of a sudden, he, an old man, who had gone through 
much in his life, began to sob, and, ceasing to speak, 
turned his face away from me. This was what he related. 
I ascertained the truth of his story on the spot, where I 
learned some new particulars, which I shall relate too. 

A washerwoman thirty years of age, fair, quiet, good-look¬ 
ing, but delicate, passed her nights in that night-lodging on 
the ground-floor in No. 32, where my friend slept among 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 125 

various shifting night-lodgers, men and women, who for five 
kopeks slept with each other. 

The landlady at this lodging was the mistress of a boat¬ 
man. In summer her lover kept a boat; and in winter they 
earned their living by letting lodgings to night-lodgers at 
three kopeks without a pillow, and at five kopeks with one. 

The washerwoman had been living here some months, 
and was a quiet woman ; but lately they began to object to 
her because she coughed, and prevented the other lodgers 
from sleeping. An old woman in particular, eight}” years 
old, half silly, and also a permanent inmate of this lodging, 
began to dislike the washerwoman, and kept annoying her, 
because she disturbed her sleep ; for all night she coughed like 
a sheep. 

The washerwoman said nothing. She owed for rent, and 
felt herself guilty, and was therefore compelled to endure. She 
began to work less and less, for her strength failed her; and 
that was why she was unable to pay her rent. She had not 
been to work at all the whole of the last week ; and she had 
been making the lives of all, and particularly of the old 
woman, miserable by her cough. 

Four days ago the landlady gave her notice to leave. She 
already owed sixty kopeks, and could not pay them, and there 
was no hope of doing so ; and other lodgers complained of her 
cough. 

When the landlady gave the washerwoman notice, and told 
her she must go away if she did not pay the rent, the old 
woman was glad, and pushed her out into the yard. The 
washerwoman went away, but came back again in an hour, 
and the landlady had not the heart to send her away again. 
. . . During the second and the third day the landlady left 
her there. “ Where shall I go? ” she kept saying. On the 
third day, the landlady’s lover, a Moscow man, who knew 
all the rules and regulations, went for a policeman. The 
policeman, with a sword and a pistol slung on a red cord, 
came into the lodging, and quietly and politely turned the 
washerwoman out into the street. 

It was a bright, sunny, but frosty day in March. The 
melting snow ran down in streams, the house-porters were 
breaking the ice. The hackney sledges bumped on the ice- 
glazed snow, and creaked over the stones. Th’e washer¬ 
woman went up the hill on the sunny side, got to the church, 
and sat down in the sun at the church-porch. But when the 


126 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


sun began to go down behind the houses, and the pools of 
water began to be covered over with a thin sheet of ice, the 
washerwoman felt chilly and terrified. She got up and 
slowly walked on. . . . Where? Home, — to the only house 
in which she had been living lately. 

While she was walking there, several times resting herself, 
it began to get dark. She approached the gate, turned into 
it, her foot slipped, she gave a shriek, and fell down. 

One man passed by, then another. “ She must be drunk,” 
they thought. Another man passed, and stumbled up against 
her, and said to the house-porter, “ Some tipsy woman is 
lying at the gate. I very nearly broke my neck over her. 
Won’t you take her away? ” 

The house-porter came. The washerwoman was dead. 
Such was what my friend related to me. 

The reader will perhaps fancy I have picked out particular 
cases in the prostitute of fifteen years of age and the story 7 
of this washerwoman ; but let him not think so: this really 
happened in one and the same night. I do not exactly re¬ 
member the date, only it was in March, 1884. 

Having heard my friend’s story, I went to the police-sta¬ 
tion, intending from there to go to Rzhanoff’s house to learn 
all the particulars of the washerwoman’s story. 

The weather was fine and sunny ; and again under the ice 
of the previous night, in the shade, you could see the water 
running; and in the sun, in the square, every thing was melt¬ 
ing fast. The trees of the garden appeared blue from over 
the river; the sparrows that were reddish in winter, and un¬ 
noticed then, now attracted people’s attention by their mer¬ 
riness ; men also tried to be merry, but they all had too many 
cares. The bells of the churches sounded ; and blending with 
them from the barracks were heard sounds of shooting, — the 
hiss of the rifle-balls, and the crack when they struck the 
target. 

I entered the police-station. There some armed men — 
policemen — led me to their chief. He, also armed with a 
sword, sabre, and pistol, was busy giving some orders about 
a ragged, trembling old man who was standing before him, 
and from weakness could not clearly answer what was asked 
of him. Having done with the old man, he turned to me. I 
inquired about the girl of last night. He first listened to me 
attentively, then he smiled, not only because I did not know 
why they 7 were taken to the police-station, but more particu- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


127 


larly at my astonishment at her youth. “Goodness! there 
are some of twelve, thirteen, and . fourteen years of age 
often,” said he, in a lively tone. 

To my question about my friend of yesterday, he told me 
that she had probably been already sent to the committee (if 
I understood him right). To my question where such passed 
the night, he gave a vague answer. The one about whom 
I spoke, he did not remember. There were so many of them 
every day. 

At Rzhan off’s house, in No. 32, I already found the clerk 
reading prayers over the dead laundry-woman. She had 
been brought in and laid on her former pallet; and the 
lodgers, all starvelings themselves, contributed money for 
the prayers, the coffin, and the shroud; the old woman had 
dressed her, and laid her out. The clerk was reading 
something in the dark ; a woman in a cloak stood holding 
a wax taper; and with a similar wax taper stood a man 
(a gentleman, it is fair to state), in a nice great-coat, trimmed 
with an Astrachan collar, in bright goloshes, and he had 
on a starched shirt. That was her brother. He had been 
hunted up. 

I passed by the dead to the landlady’s room, in order to 
ask her all the particulars. She was afraid of my questions, 
— afraid probably of being charged with something; but by 
and by she grew talkative, and told me ail. On passing by 
again, I looked at the dead body. All the dead are beauti¬ 
ful ; but this one was particularly so, and touching in her 
coffin, with her clear, pale face, with closed, swollen eyes, 
sunken cheeks, and fair, soft hair over her high forehead ; 
her face looked weary, but kind, and not sad at all, but 
rather astonished. And indeed, if the living do not see, the 
dead may well be astonished. 

On the day 1 wrote this, there was a great ball in Moscow. 
On the same night I left home after eight o’clock. I live in 
a locality surrounded by factories ; and I left home after the 
factory whistle had sounded, and when, after a week of in¬ 
cessant w'ork, people were freed for their holiday. Factory- 
men passed by me, and I by them, all turning their steps to 
the public-houses and inns. Many were already tips}': many 
more were with women. 

Every morning at five I hear each of the whistles, which 
means that the labor of women, children, and old people has 
begun. At eight o’clock another whistle, —this means half 


128 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN? 


an hour’s rest; at twelve the third whistle, — this means an 
hour for dinner. At eight o’clock the fourth whistle, indi¬ 
cating cessation from work. By a strange coincidence, all 
the three factories in my neighborhood produce only the 
articles necessary for balls. 

In one factory, — the one nearest to me, — they make 
nothing but stockings ; in the other opposite, silk stuffs ; in 
the third, perfumes and pomades. 

One may, on hearing these wdiistles, attach to them no other 
meaning than that of the indication of time. “There, the 
whistle has sounded : it is time to go out for a walk.” 

But one may associate with them also the meaning they in 
reality have, — that at the first whistle at five o’clock in the 
morning, men and women, who have slept side by side in a 
damp cellar, get up in the dark, and hurry away into the 
noisy building, and take their part in a work of which they 
see neither cessation nor utility for themselves, and work 
often so in the heat, in suffocating exhalations, with very 
rare intervals of rest, for one, two, or three, or even twelve 
and more hours. They fall asleep, and get up again, and 
again do this work, meaningless for themselves, to which 
they are compelled exclusively by want. And so it goes on 
from one week to another, interrupted only by holidays. 

And now I saw these working-people freed for one of 
these holidays. They go out into the street: everywhere 
there are inns, public-houses, and gay women. And they, in 
a drunken state, pull each other by the arms, and carry along 
with them girls like the one whom I saw conducted to the 
police-station : the}’ hire hackney-coaches, and ride and walk 
from one inn to another, and abuse each other, and totter 
about, and say they know not what. 

Formerly, when I saw the factory people knocking about 
in this way, I used to turn aside with disgust, and almost 
reproached them ; but since I hear these daily whistles, and 
know what they mean, I am only astonished that all these 
men do not come into the condition of utter beggars, with 
whom Moscow is filled ; and the women into the position of 
the girl whom I had met near my house. 

Thus I walked on, looking at these men, observing how 
they went about the streets till eleven o’clock. Then their 
movements became quieter: there remained here and there 
a few tipsy people, and I met some men and women who 
were being conducted to the police-station. And now, from 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


129 


every side, carriages appeared, all going in one direction. On 
the coach-box sat a coachman, sometimes in a sheepskin 
coat; and a footman, —a dandy with a cockade. Well-fed 
trotters, covered with cloth, ran at the rate of fifteen miles an 
hour: in the carriages sat ladies wrapped in shawls, and 
taking great care not to spoil their flowers and their toilets. 
All, beginning with the harness on the horses, carriages, 
gutta-percha wheels, the cloth of the coachman’s coat, down 
to the stockings, shoes, flowers, velvet, gloves, scents, — all 
these articles have been made by those men, some of whom 
fell asleep on their own pallets in their mean rooms, some in 
night-houses with prostitutes, and others in the police- 
station. 

The ball-goers drive past these men, in and with things 
made by them ; and it does not even enter into their minds 
that there could possibly be any connection between the ball 
they are going to and these tipsy people, to whom their 
coachmen shout out so angrily. With quite easy minds, and 
assurance that they are doing nothing wrong, they enioy 
themselves at the ball. 

Enjoy themselves! 

From eleven o’clock in the evening till six in the morning, 
in the very depth of the night, while with empty stomachs 
men are lying in night-lodgings, or dying as the washer¬ 
woman had done ! 

The enjoyment of the ball consists in women and girls 
uncovering their bosoms, putting on artificial protuberances, 
and altogether getting themselves up in a way that no girl and 
no woman who is not yet depraved would, on an}’ account, 
appear before men ; and in this half-naked condition, with 
uncovered bosoms, and arms bare up to the shoulders, with 
dresses puffed behind and tight round the hips, in the bright¬ 
est light, women and girls, whose first virtue has always been 
modesty, appear among strange men, who are also dressed 
in indecently tight-fitting clothes, and with them, to the 
sound of exciting music, embrace each other, and pivot round 
and round. Old women, often also half naked like the 
younger ones, are sitting looking on, and eating and drink¬ 
ing : the old men do the same. No wonder it is doue at 
night, when every one else is sleeping, so that no one may 
see it! 

But this is not done in order to hide it; there is nothing 
indeed to hide; all is very nice and good; and by this 


130 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


enjoyment, in which is swallowed up the painful labor of 
thousands, not only is nobody harmed, but by this very thing 
poor people are fed! The ball goes on very merrily, may 
be, but how did it come to do so? When we see in society 
or among ourselves one who has not eaten, or is cold, we are 
ashamed to enjoy ourselves, and cannot begin to be merry 
until he is fed, saying nothing of the fact that we cannot 
imagine that there are such people who can enjoy themselves 
by means of any thing which produces the sufferings of 
others. 

We are disgusted, and we do not understand the enjoy¬ 
ment of naughty boys who have squeezed a dog’s tail into a 
piece of split wood. How is it, then, that in our enjoy¬ 
ments we become blind, and do not see that cleft in which 
we have pinched those men who suffer for our enjoyment? 

We know that each woman at this ball whose dress costs a 
hundred and fifty rubles was not born at the ball, but she 
has lived also in the country, has seen peasants, knows her 
own nurse and maid, whose fathers and brothers are poor, 
for whom earning one hundred and fifty rubles to build a cot¬ 
tage with is the end and aim of a long, laborious life; she 
knows this ; how can she, then, enjoy herself, knowing that 
on her half-naked body she is wearing the cottage which is 
the dream of her housemaid’s brother? 

But let us suppose she has not thought about this: she 
cannot help knowing that velvet and silk, sweetmeats and 
flowers, and laces and dresses, do not grow of themselves, but 
are made by men. 

It would seem she could not help knowing that men make 
all this, and under what circumstances, and why. She can¬ 
not help knowing that her dressmaker, whom she has been 
scolding to-day, has made this dress not at all out of love 
to her, therefore she cannot help knowing that all these 
things were made — her laces, flowers, and velvet — from 
sheer want. 

But perhaps she is so blinded that she does not think of 
all this. Well, but, at all events, she could not help know¬ 
ing that five people, old, respectable, often delicate men and 
women, have not slept all night, and have been busy on her 
account. This, also, she could not help knowing, —that on 
this night there were twenty-eight degrees of frost, and that 
her coachman — an old man — was sitting in this frost all 
night, upon his coach-box. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


181 


If these young women and girls, from the hypnotic influ¬ 
ence of the ball, fail to see all this, we cannot judge them. 
Poor things! they consider all to be good which is pro¬ 
nounced so by their elders. How do these elders explain 
their cruelty? They, indeed, always answer in the same 
way : “ I compel no one ; what I have, I have bought; foot¬ 
men, chambermaids, coachman, I hire. There is no harm 
in engaging and in buying. I compd none; I hire; what 
wrong is there in that? ” 

Some days ago I called on a friend. Passing through the 
first room, I wondered at seeing at a table two females, for I 
knew my acquaintance was a bachelor. A skinny, yellow, 
elderly-looking woman, about thirty^, with a kerchief thrown 
over her shoulder, was briskly doing something over the table 
with her hands, jerking nervousty, as if in a fit. Opposite to 
her sat a little girl, who was also doing something, jerking in 
the same way. They both seemed to be suffering from St. 
Vitus’s dance. I came nearer and looked closer to see what 
they were about. 

They glanced up at me, and then continued their work as 
attentively as before. 

Before them were spread tobacco and cigarettes. They 
were making cigarettes. The woman rubbed the tobacco fine 
between the palms of her hands, caught it up by a machine, 
put on the tubes, and threw them to the girl. The girl folded 
the papers, put them over the cigarette, threw it aside, and 
took up another. 

All this was performed with such speed, with such dex¬ 
terity, that it was impossible to describe it. I expressed my 
wonder at their quickness. “ I have been at this business 
fourteen years,” said the woman. 

“Is it hard work? ’’ 

“ Yes : my chest aches, and the air is choky with tobacco.” 

But it was not necessary for her to have said so: you need 
only have looked at her or at the girl. The latter had been 
at this business three years; but any one not seeing her at 
this work would have said that she had a strong constitution, 
which was already beginning to be broken. 

My acquaintance, a kind-hearted man of liberal views, 
hired these women to make him cigarettes at two rubles and 
a half a thousand. He has money, and he pays it away for 
this work : what harm is there in it ? 

My acquaintance gets up at twelve. His evenings, from 


132 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN f 


six to two, he spends at cards or at the piano; he eats and 
drinks ; other people do all the work for him. He has de¬ 
vised for himself a new pleasure, — smoking. I can remem¬ 
ber when he began to smoke. Here are a woman and a girl, 
who scarcely earn their living by transforming themselves 
into machines, and pass all their lives in breathing tobacco, 
thus ruining their lives. He has money which he has not 
earned, and he prefers playing at cards to making cigarettes 
for himself. He gives these women money, only under the 
condition that they continue to live as miserably as they have 
been living, in making cigarettes for him. 

I am fond of cleanliness ; and I give money, only under the 
condition that the washerwoman washes s my shirts, which 1 
change twice a day; and the washing of these shirts having 
taxed the utmost strength of the washerwoman, she has died. 

What is wrong in this ? 

Men who buy and hire will continue doing so whether I do, 
or do not; they will force other people to make velvets and 
dainties, and will buy them whether I do, or do not; so also 
they will hire people to make cigarettes and to wash shirts. 
Why should I, then, deprive myself of velvets, sweetmeats, 
cigarettes, and clean shirts, when their production is already 
set in going. 

A crowd, maddened with the passion of destruction, will 
employ this very reasoning. It leads a pack of dogs, when 
one of their number runs against another and knocks it down, 
to attack it and tear it to pieces. Others have already be¬ 
gun, have done a little mischief ; why shouldn’t I, too, do the 
same? What can it possibly signify if I wear a dirty shirt, 
and make my cigarettes myself ? Could that help any one ? 
Ask men who desire to justify themselves. 

Had we not wandered so far from truth, it would be need¬ 
less to answer this question ; but we are so entangled that 
such a question seems natural to us, and, therefore, though I 
feel ashamed, I must answer it. 

What difference would it be if I should wear my shirt a 
week instead of one day, and make m 3 7 cigarettes myself, or 
leave off smoking altogether? 

The difference would be this,— that a certain washerwoman, 
and a certain cigarette-maker, would exert themselves less, 
and what I gave formerly for the washing of my shirt, and 
for the making of m 3 7 cigarettes, I may give now to that or 
to another woman ; and working-people who are tired by their 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEE ? 


133 


work, instead of overworking themselves, will be able to rest 
and to have tea._ But I have heard objections to this, so 
averse are the rich and the luxurious to understand their 
position. 

They reply, “ If I should wear dirty linen, leave off smok¬ 
ing, and give this money away to the poor, then this money 
would be all the same taken away from them, and my drop 
will not help to swell the sea.” 

I am still more ashamed to answer such a reply, but at the 
same time I must do so. If I came among savages who 
gave me chops which I thought delicious, but the next day I 
learned (perhaps saw myself) that these delicious chops 
were made of a human prisoner who had been slain in order 
to make them ; and if I think it bad to eat men, however de¬ 
licious the cutlets may be. and however general the custom 
to eat men among the persons with whom I live, and however 
small the utility to the prisoners who have been prepared for 
food my refusal to eat them may be, I shall not and can not 
eat them. 

Maybe I shall eat human flesh when urged by hunger; but 
I shall not make a feast of it, and shall not take part in 
feasts with human flesh, and shall not seek such feasts, and 
be proud of my partaking of them. 


XXV. 


But what is to be done, then? Is it we who are to blame? 
And if not, who is ? 

We say, It is not we who have done all this ; it has been 
done of itself; as children say when they break any thing, 
that it broke itself. We say that, as towns are already in 
existence, we, who are living there, must feed men by 
buying their labor. But that is not true. It need only be 
observed how we live in the country, and how we feed peo¬ 
ple there. 

Winter is over: Easter is past. In town the same or¬ 
gies of the rich go on,—on the boulevards, in gardens, in 
the parks, on the river, music, theatres, riding, illuminations, 
fire-works ; but in the country it is still better, — the air 
is purer; the trees, the meadow r s, the flowers, are fresher. 
We must go where all is budding and blooming. And now 
the majority of rich people, who utilize other men’s labor, 


134 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


go into the country to breathe the purer air, to look at the 
meadows and woods. And here in the country among 
humble villagers, who feed upon bread and onions, work 
eighteen hours every day, and have neither sufficient sleep 
nor clothes, rich people take up their abode. No one tempts 
these people: here are no factories, and no idle hands, of 
which there are so many in town, and which we imagine 
we feed by giving them w'ork to do. Here people never 
can do their own work in time during the summer; and not 
only are there no idle hands, but much property is lost for 
want of hands; and an immense number of men, children, 
old people, and women with child, overwork themselves. 

How, then, do rich people order their lives here? Thus: 
If there happens to be an old mansion, built in the time of 
the serfs, then this house is renewed and embellished : if 
there is not, one is built of two or three stories. The rooms, 
which are from twelve to twenty and more in number, are 
all about sixteen feet high. The floors are inlaid ; in the 
windows are put single panes of glass, expensive carpets 
on the floors ; expensive furniture is procured, —a sideboard, 
for instance, costing from twenty to sixty pounds. Near 
the mansion, roads are made; flower-beds are laid out; 
there are croquet-grounds, giant-strides, reflecting-globes, 
conservatories, and hot-liouses, and always luxurious stables. 
All is painted in colors, prepared with the very oil which 
old people and children lack for their porridge. If a rich 
man can afford it, he buys such a house for himself; if he 
cannot, he hires one: but however poor and however liberal 
a man of our circle may be, he always takes up his abode 
in the country in such a house, for building and keeping 
which it is necessary to take away dozens of working-people 
who have not enough time to do their own business in the 
field in order to earn their living. 

Here we cannot say that factories are already in existence 
and will continue so, whether we make use of their work 
or no ; we cannot say that we are feeding idle hands; here 
we plainly establish the factories for making things neces¬ 
sary for us, and simply make use of the surrounding people ; 
we divert the people from work necessaiy for them, as 
for us and for all, and by such system deprave some, and 
ruin the lives and the health of others. 

There lives, let us say, in a village, an educated and 
respectable family of the upper class, or that of a govern- 


WHAT MU 1ST WE J DO THEN f 


135 


ment officer. All the members of it and the visitors assem¬ 
ble towards the middle of June, because up to June they 
had been studying and passing their examinations: they 
assemble when mowing begins, and they stay until Septem¬ 
ber, until the harvest and sowing time. The members of 
the family (as almost all men of this class) remain in the 
country from the beginning of the urgent work, — harvest¬ 
time,— not to the end of it, indeed, because in September 
the sowing goes on, and the digging up of potatoes, but till 
labor begins to slacken. During all the time of their stay, 
around them and close by, the peasants’ summer work has 
been proceeding, the strain of which, however much we may 
have heard or read of it, however much we may have looked 
at it, we can form no adequate idea without having experi¬ 
enced it ourselves. 

And the members of the family, about ten persons, have 
been living as they did in town, if possible still worse than 
in town, because here in the village they are supposed to 
be resting (after doing nothing), and offer no pretence in 
the way of work, and no excuse for their idleness. 

In the middle of the summer, when people are forced from 
want to feed on kvas, and bread and onions, begins the 
mowiug-time. Gentlefolks, who live in the countiy, see 
this labor, partly order it, partly admire it; enjoy the smell 
of the drying hay, the sound of women’s songs, the noise of 
the scythes, and the sight of the rows of mowers, and of the 
women raking. They see this as well near their house as 
when they, with young people and children, who do nothing 
all the day long, drive w r ell-fed horses a distance of a few 
hundred yards to the bathing-place. 

The work of mowing is one of the most important in the 
world. Nearly every year, from want of hands and of time, 
the meadows remain half cut, and may remain so till the 
rains begin ; so that the degree of intensity of the labor 
decides the question whether twenty or more per cent will be 
added to the stores of men, or whether this hay will be left 
to rot and spoil while yet uncut. 

And if there is more hay, there will be also more meat for 
old people, and milk for children ; thus matters stand in gen¬ 
eral ; but in particular for each mower here is decided the 
question of bread and milk for himself, and for his children 
during the winter. 

Each of the working-people, male and female, knows it: 


136 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


even the children know that this is an important business, 
and that one ought to work with all one’s strength, carry a 
jug with kvas for the father to the mowing-place, and, shift¬ 
ing it from one hand to another, run barefoot as quickly as 
possible, a distance of perhaps a mile and a half from the 
village, in order to be in time for dinner, that father may not 
grumble. Every one knows, that, from the mowing to the 
harvest, there will be no interruption of labor, and no time 
for rest. And besides mowing, each has some other business 
to do, — to plough up new land, and to harrow it; the women 
have cloth to make, bread to bake, and the washing to do ; and 
the peasants must drive to the mill and to market; the } 7 have 
the official affairs of their community to attend to ; they 
have also to provide the local government officials with means 
of locomotion, and to pass the night in the fields with the 
pastured horses. 

All, old and young and sick, work with all their strength. 

The peasants work in such a way, that, when cutting the 
last rows, the mowers, weak people, growing youths, old men, 
are so tired, that, having rested a little, it is with great pain 
they begin anew: the women, often with child, work hard 
too. 

It is a strained, incessant labor. All work to the utmost 
of their strength, and use not only all their provisions, but 
what they have in store : during harvest-time all the peasants 
grow thinner, although they never were very stout. 

There is a small company laboring in the hayfield, three 
peasants, — one of them an old man ; another his nephew, who 
is married ; and the third the village bootmaker, a thin, wiry 
man. Their mowing this morning decides their fate for the 
coming winter, whether they will be able to keep a cow and 
pay taxes. This is their second week’s work. The rain 
hindered them for a while. After the rain had left off, and 
the water had dried up, they decided on making hayricks ; 
and in order to do it quicker, they decided that two women 
must rake to each scythe. With the old man came out his 
wife, fifty years of age, worn out with labor and the bearing 
of eleven children, deaf, but still strong enough for work; 
and his daughter, thirteen years of age, a short but brisk 
and strong little girl. 

With the nephew came his wife, —a tall woman, as strong 
as a peasant; and his sister-in-law,—a soldier’s wife, who 
was with child. With the bootmaker came his wife, — a 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


137 


strong working-woman ; and her mother, — an old woman 
about eight}’, who for the rest of the year used to beg. 

They all draw up in a line, and work from morning to 
evening in the burning sun of June. It is steaming hot, and 
a thunder-shower is threatening. Every moment of work is 
precious. They have not wished to leave off working, even 
in order to fetch water or kvas. A small boy, the grandson 
of the old woman, brings them water. The old woman is 
evidently anxious only on one point, — not to be obliged to 
cease working. She does not let the rake out of her hands, 
and moves about with great difficulty. The little boy, quite 
bent under the jug with water, heavier than he himself, walks 
with short steps on his bare feet, and carries the jug, with 
many shifts. The little girl takes on her shoulders a load of 
hay, which is also heavier than herself; walks a few paces, 
and stops, then throws it down, having no strength to carry 
it farther. The old man’s wife rakes together unceasingly, 
her kerchief loosened from her disordered hair; she carries 
the ha} 7 , breathing heavily, and staggering under the burden : 
the cobbler’s mother is only raking, but this also is beyond 
her strength ; she slowly drags her ill-shod feet, and looks 
gloomily before her, like one at the point of death. The old 
man purposely sends her far away from the others, to rake 
about the ricks, in order that she may not attempt to com¬ 
pete with them ; but she does not leave off working, but 
continues with the same dead, gloomy face as long as the 
others. 

The sun is already setting behind the wood, and the ricks 
are not yet in order: there is much still to be done. 

All feel that it is time to leave off working, but no one 
says so; each waiting for the other to suggest it. At last, 
the bootmaker, realizing that he has no more strength left, 
proposes to the old man to leave the ricks till to-morrow, and 
the old man agrees to it; and at once the women go to fetch 
their clothes, their jugs, their pitchforks ; and the old woman 
sits down where she was standing, and then lays herself 
down with the same fixed stare on her face. But as the 
women go away, she gets up groaning, and, crawling along, 
follows them. 

Let us turn to the country-house. The same evening, 
when from the side of the village were heard the rattle of the 
scythes of the toil-worn mowers who were returning from 
work, the sounds of the hammer against the anvil, the cries 


138 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


of women and girls who had just had time to put away their 
rakes, and were already running to drive the cattle in, — with 
these blend other sounds from the country-house. Drin, 
drin, drin! goes the piano; a Hungarian song is heard 
through the noise of the croquet-balls ; before the stable an 
open carriage is standing, harnessed with four fat horses, 
which has been hired for twenty shillings to bring some 
guests a distance of ten miles. 

Horses standing by the carriage rattle their little bells. 
Before them hay has been thrown, which they are scattering 
with their hoofs, the same hay which the peasants have been 
gathering with such hard labor. In the yard of this mansion 
there is movement; a healthy, well-fed fellow in a pink shirt, 
presented to him for his service as a house-porter, is calling 
the coachmen, and telling them to harness and saddle some 
horses. Two peasants, who live here as coachmen, come out 
of their room, and go in an easy manner, swinging their arms, 
to saddle horses for the ladies and gentlemen. Still nearer 
to the house the sounds of another piano are heard. It is 
the music-mistress, who lives in the family to teach the chil¬ 
dren, practising her Schumann. The sounds of one piano 
jangle with those of another. Quite near the house walk 
two nurses ; one is young, another old ; they lead and carry 
children to bed ; these children are of the same age as those 
who ran from the village with jugs. One nurse is English : 
she cannot speak Russian. She was engaged to come from 
England, not from being distinguished by some peculiar qual¬ 
ities, but simply because she does not speak Russian. Far¬ 
ther on is another person, a French woman, who is also 
engaged because she does not know Russian. Farther on a 
peasant, with two women, is watering flowers near the house : 
another is cleaning a gun for one of the young gentlemen. 
Here two women are carrying a basket with clean linen,— 
they have been washing for all these gentlefolks. In the 
house two women have scarcely time to wash the plates and 
dishes after the company, who have just done eating; and 
two peasants in evening clothes are running up and down 
the stairs, serving coffee, tea, wine, seltzer-water, etc. Up¬ 
stairs a table is spread. A meal has just ended; and an¬ 
other will soon begin, to continue till cock-crow, and often 
till morning dawns. Some are sitting smoking, playing 
cards; others are sitting and smoking, engaged in discours¬ 
ing liberal ideas of reform; and others, again, walk to and 


WHAT MV ST WE DO THEN? 


139 


fro, eat, smoke, and, not knowing what to do, have made up 
their mind to take a drive. 

The household consists of fifteen persons, healthy men 
and women; and thirty persons, healthy working-people, 
male and female, labor for them. And this takes place 
there, where every hour, and each little boy, are precious. 

This will be so, also, in July, when the peasants, not having 
had their sleep out, will mow the oats at night, in order that 
it may not be lost, and the women will get up before dawn 
in order to finish their threshing in time ; when this old 
woman, who had been exhausted during the harvest, and the 
women with child, and the little children, all will again over¬ 
work themselves, and when there is a great want of hands, 
horses, carts, in order to house this corn upon which all men 
feed, of which millions of poods are necessary in Russia in 
order that men should not die: during even such a time, 
the idle lives of ladies and gentlemen will go on. There will 
be private theatricals, picnics, hunting, drinking, eating, 
piano-playing, singing, dancing, — in fact, incessant orgies. 

Here, at least, it is impossible to find any excuse from 
the fact that all this had been going on before : nothing 
of the kind had been in existence. We oprselves carefully 
create such a life, taking bread and labor away from the 
work-worn people. We live sumptuously, as if there were 
no connection whatever between the dying washerwoman, 
child-prostitute, women worn out by making cigarettes, and 
by all the intense labor around us which is inadequate to 
their unnourished strength. We do not want to see the fact 
that if there were not our idle, luxurious, depraved lives, 
there would not be this labor disproportioned to the strength 
of people, and that if there were not this labor we could not 
go on living in the same wa}\ 

It appears to us that their sufferings are one thing, and our 
lives another, and that we, living as we do, are innocent and 
pure as doves. We read the description of the lives of the 
Romans, and wonder at the inhumanity of a heartless Lucul- 
lus, who gorged himself with fine dishes and delicious wines 
while people were starving : we shake our heads, and wonder 
at the barbarism of our grandfathers, — the serf-owners,— 
who provided themselves with orchestras and theatres, and 
employed whole villages to keep up their gardens. From the 
height of our greatness we wonder at their inhumanity. We 
read the words of Isaiah v. 8, Woe unto them that join 


140 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room, 
and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the laud. 

11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that 
they may follow strong drink; that tarry late into the night, 
till wine inflame them ! 

12. And the harp, and the lute, the tabret, the pipe, and 
wine, are in their feasts : but they regard not the work of the 
Lord, neither have they considered the operation of his hands. 

18. Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, 
and sin as it were with a cart rope. 

20. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; 
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that put 
bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! 

21. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and 
prudent in their own sight! 

22. Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men 
of strength to mingle strong drink : 

23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away 
the righteousness of the righteous from him ! 

We read these words, and it seems to us that they have 
nothing to do with us. We read in the Gospel, Matthew 
iii. 10: And even now is the axe laid unto the root of the 
tree : every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit 
is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 

And we are quite sure that the good tree bearing good fruit 
is we ourselves, and that those words are said, not to us, but 
to some other bad men. 

We read the words of Isaiah vi. 10: Make the heart of 
this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their 
eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, 
and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be 
healed. 

11. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he auswered, 
Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses with¬ 
out man, and the land become utterly waste. 

We read, and are quite assured that this wonderful thing 
has not happened to us, but to some other people. But it is 
for this very reason we do not see that this has happened to, 
and is taking place with, us. We do not hear, we do not see, 
and do not understand with our heart. But why has it so 
happened ? 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


141 


XXVI. 


How can a man who considers himself to be, we will not 
say a Christian, or an educated and humane man, but simply 
a man not entirely devoid of reason and of conscience, — 
how can he, I say, live in such a way, that, not taking part 
in the struggle of all mankind for life, he only swallows up 
the labor of others, struggling for existence, and by his own 
claims increases the labor of those who struggle, and the 
number of those who perish in struggle? 

And such men abound in our so-called Christian and cul¬ 
tured world ; and not only do they abound in our world, but 
the very ideal of the men of our Christian, cultured world, is 
to get the largest amount of property, — that is, wealth, — 
which secures all comforts and idleness of life by freeing its 
possessors from the struggle for existence, and enabling them, 
as much as possible, to profit by the labor of those brothers 
of theirs who perish in that struggle. 

How could men have fallen into such astounding error? 

How could they have come to such a state that they can 
neither see nor hear nor understand with their heart that 
which is so clear, obvious, and certain? 

One need only think for a moment in order to be terrified 
at the contradiction of our lives to what we profess to 
believe, we, whether we be Christian, or only humane, edu¬ 
cated people. Be it God or a law of nature that governs 
the world and men, good or bad, the position of men in 
this world, so long as we know it, has always been such 
that naked men, without wool on their bodies, without holes 
in which to take refuge, without food which they might 
find in the field like Robinson Crusoe on his island, are 
put into a position of a continual and incessant struggle 
with nature in order to cover their bodies by making clothes 
for themselves, to protect themselves by a roof over their 
heads, and to earn food in order twice or thrice a day to 
satisfy their hunger, and that of their children and of their 
parents. 

Wherever and whenever and to whatever extent we 
observe the lives of men, whether in Europe, America, 
China, or Russia; whether we take into consideration all 
mankind, or a small portion, whether in olden times in a 
nomad state, or in modern times with steam-engines, steam- 


142 


WHAT MUST WE DO. THEN f 


ploughs, sewing-machines, and electric light, — we shall see 
one and the same thing going on, — that men, working con¬ 
stantly and incessantly, are not able to get clothes, shelter, 
and food for themselves, their little ones, and the old, and 
that the greatest number of men as well in olden times as 
now perish from want of the necessaries of life and from 
overwork. 

Wherever we may live, if we draw a circle around us, of 
a hundred thousand, or a thousand or ten, or even one mile’s 
circumference, and look at the lives of those men who are 
inside our circle, we shall find half-starved children, old 
people male and female, pregnant women, sick and weak 
persons, working beyond their strength, and who have 
neither food nor rest enough to support them, and who, for 
this reason, die before their time: we shall see others full- 
grown, who are even killed by dangerous and hurtful tasks. 

Since the world has existed, we find that men with great 
efforts, sufferings, and privations have been struggling for 
their common wants, and have not been able to overcome 
the difficult}’. 

Besides, we also know that every one of us, wherever 
and however he may live, 'nolens volens , is every day, and 
every hour of the day, absorbing for himself a part of the 
labor done by mankind. 

Wherever and however he lives, his house, the roof over 
him, do not grow of themselves; the firewood in his stove 
does not get there of itself ; the water did not come of itself 
either; and the baked bread does not fall down from the 
sky ; his dinner, his clothes, and the covering for his feet, 
all this has been made for him, not only by men of past 
generations, long dead, but it is being done for him now 
by those men of whom hundreds and thousands are fainting 
away and dying, in vain efforts to get for themselves and 
for their children sufficient shelter, food, and clothes, — 
means to save themselves and their children from suffering 
and a premature death. 

All men are struggling with want. They are struggling 
so intensely that always around them their brethren, 
fathers, mothers, children, are perishing. Men in this 
world are like those on a dismantled or water-logged ship, 
with a short allowance of food; all are put by God, or by 
nature, in such a position that they must husband their 
food, and unceasingly war with want. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


143 


Each interruption in this work of every one of us, each 
absorption of the labor of others useless for the common 
welfare, is ruinous, alike for us and them. 

How is it that the majority of educated people, without 
laboring, are quietly absorbing the labors of others, neces¬ 
sary for their own lives, and are considering such an exist¬ 
ence quite natural and reasonable? 

If we are to free ourselves from the labor proper and 
natural to all, and lay it on others, at the same time not 
considering ourselves to be traitors and thieves, we can do 
so only by two suppositions, — first, that we (the men who 
take no part in common labor) are different beings from 
workingmen, and have a peculiar destiny to fulfil in society 
(like drone-bees, which have a different function from the 
working-bees) ; or secondly, that the business which we 
(men freed from the struggle for existence) are doing for 
other men is so useful for all that it undoubtedly compen¬ 
sates for that harm which we do to others in overburdening 
them. 

In olden times, men who utilized the labor of others 
asserted, first, that they belonged to a different race ; and 
secondly, that they had from God a peculiar mission, —car¬ 
ing for the welfare of others; in other words, to govern and 
teach them : and therefore, they assured others, and partly 
believed themselves, that the business they did was more 
useful and more important for the people than those labors 
by which they profit. This justification was sufficient so 
long as the direct interference of God in human affairs, and 
the inequality of human races, was undoubted. 

But with Christianity, and the consciousness of the equality 
and unity of all men proceeding from it, this justification 
could no longer be expressed in its previous form. 

It was no longer possible to assert that men are born of 
different kind and quality, and having a different destiny; 
and the old justification, though still held by some, has been 
little by little destroyed, and has now almost entirely disap¬ 
peared. 

But though the justification disappeared, the fact itself, 
of the freeing of some men from labor, and the appropriation 
by them of other men’s labor, remained the same for those 
who had the power of enforcing it. For this existing fact, 
new excuses have constantly been invented, in order that, 
without asserting the difference of human beings, men might 


144 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


be able to free themselves from personal labor with apparent 
justice. A great many such justifications have been in¬ 
vented. 

However strange it may seem, the main object of all that 
has been called science, and the ruling tendency of science, 
has been the seeking out of such excuse. 

This has been the object of the theological sciences, and 
of the science of law: this was the object of so-called 
philosophy, aud this became lately the object of modern 
rationalistic science. All the theological subtleties which 
aimed at proving that a certain church is the only true 
successor of Christ, and that, therefore, she alone has full 
and uncontrolled power over the souls and bodies of men, 
had in view this very object. 

All the legal sciences — those of state law, penal law, civil 
law, and international law — have this sole aim : the majority 
of philosophical theories, especialty that of Hegel, which 
reigned over the minds of men for such a long time, and 
maintained the assertion that every thing which exists is 
reasonable, and that the state is a necessary form of the 
development of human personality, had only this one object 
in view. 

Comte’s positive philosophy and its outcome, the doctrine 
that mankind is an organism; Darwin’s doctrine of the 
struggle for existence, directing life and its conclusion, the 
teaching of diversity of human races, the now so popular 
anthropology, biology, and sociology,—all have the same 
, aim. These sciences have become favorites, because they all 
serve for the justification of the existing fact of some men 
being able to free themselves from the human duty of labor, 
and to consume other men’s labor. 

All these theories, as is always the case, are worked out 
in the mysterious sanctums of augurs, and in vague, unintelli¬ 
gible expressions are spread abroad among the masses, and 
adopted by them. 

As in olden times, the subtleties of theology, which justified 
violence in church and state, were the special property of 
priests; and in the masses of the people, the conclusions, 
taken by faith, and ready made for them, were circulated, 
that the power of kings, clergy and nobility, was sacred : so 
afterwards, the philosophical and legal subtleties of so-called 
science became the property of the priests of science ; and 
through the masses only the ready-made conclusions, accepted 


WEI AT MUST WE DO THEN? 


145 


by faith, that social order (the organization of society) 
must be such as it is, and cannot be otherwise, was 
diffused. 

So it is also now : it is only in the sanctuaries of the 
modern sages that the laws of life and development of or¬ 
ganisms are analyzed. Whereas in the crowd, the ready¬ 
made conclusion accepted on trust, that division of labor is 
a law, confirmed by science, is circulated, and that thus it 
must be that some are starving and toiling, and others 
eternally feasting, and that this very ruin of some, and feasting 
of others, is the undoubted law of man’s life, to which we 
must submit. 

The current justification of their idleness of all so-called 
educated people, with their various activities, from the 
railway proprietor down to the author and artist, is this: 
We men who have freed ourselves from the common human 
diit} T of taking part in the struggle for existence, are furthering 
progress, and so we are of great use to all human societ}’, of 
such use that it counterbalances all the harm we do the people 
by consuming their labor. 

This reasoning seems to the men of our day to be not at 
all like the reasoning by which the former non-workers 
justified themselves ; just as the reasoning of the Roman 
emperors and citizens, that but for them the civilized world 
would go to ruin, seemed to them to be of quite another 
order to that of the Egyptians and Persians, and so also an 
exactly similar kind of reasoning seemed in turn to the knights 
and clergy of the Middle Ages totally different from that of 
the Romans. 

But it only seems to be so. One need but reflect upon 
the justification of our time in order to ascertain that in it 
there is nothing new. It is only a little differently dressed 
up, but it is the same because it is based upon the same 
principle. Every justification of one man’s consumption of 
the labor of others, while producing none himself, as with 
Pharaoh and his soothsayers, the emperors of Rome and 
those of the Middle Ages and their citizens, knights, priests, 
and clergy, alwa} T s consists in these two assertions: First, 
we take the labor of the masses, because we are a peculiar 
people, called by God to govern them, and to teach them 
divine truths; secondly, those who compose the masses 
cannot be judges of the measure of labor which we take 
from them for the good we do for them, because, as it has 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


146 

been said by the Pharisees, “ This multitude which knoweth 
not the law are accursed ” (John vii. 49). 

The people do not understand wherein lies their good, and 
therefore they cannot be judges of the benefits done to them. 
The justification of our time, notwithstanding all apparent 
originality, in fact consists of the same fundamental asser¬ 
tions : First, we are a peculiar people, — we are an educated 
people, — we further progress and civilization, and by this 
fact, we procure for the masses a great advantage. Sec¬ 
ondly, the uneducated crowd does not understand that 
advantage which we procure for them, and therefore cannot 
be judges of it. 

The fundamental assertions are the same. We free our¬ 
selves from labor, appropriate the labor of others, and by 
this increase the burden of our fellows, and assert that in 
compensation for this we bring them a greater advantage, of 
which they, owing to their ignorance, cannot be judges. 

Is it not, then, the same thing? The only difference lies in 
this, that formerly the citizens, the Roman priests, the 
knights, and the nobility, had claims on other men’s labor, 
and now these claims are put forward by a caste who term 
themselves educated. 

The lie is the same, because the men who justify them¬ 
selves are in the same false position. The lie consists in the 
fact, that, before beginning to reason about the advantages 
conferred on the people by men who have freed themselves 
from labor, certain men, Pharaohs, priests, or we ourselves, — 
educated people, — assume this position, and only afterwards 
excogitate a justification for it. 

This very position of some men who oppressed others, 
in former time as now, serves as a universal basis. The 
difference of our justification from the ancient ones, consists 
only in the fact that it is more false, and less well grounded. 
The old emperors and popes, if they themselves and the peo¬ 
ple believed in their divine calling, could plainly explain why 
they were the men to control the labor of others: they said 
that they were appointed by God himself for this very thing, 
and from God they had a commandment to teach the people 
divine truths revealed to them, and to govern them. 

But modern, educated men, who do not labor with their 
hands, acknowledging the equality of all men, cannot explain 
why they in particular and their children (for education is 
only by money ; that is, by power) are those lucky persons 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


147 


who are called to an immaterial, easy utility, out of those 
millions who by hundreds and thousands are perishing in 
making it possible for them to be educated. Their only jus¬ 
tification consists in this, that they, such as they now are, 
instead of doing harm to the people by freeing themselves 
from labor, and by swallowing up labor, bring to the people 
an advantage unintelligible^ to them, which compensates for 
all the evil perpetrated upon them. 


XXVII. 

The theory by which men who have freed themselves from 
personal labor justify themselves in its simplest and most 
exact form, is this: We men, having freed ourselves from 
work, and having by violence appropriated the labor of oth¬ 
ers, find ourselves better able to benefit them; in other 
words, certain men, for doing the people a palpable and 
comprehensible harm, — utilizing by violence their labor, and 
thereby increasiifg the difficulty of their struggles with nature, 
— do to them an impalpable and incomprehensible good. 

This proposition is a very strange one ; but men, as well of 
former as also of modern times, who have lived on the labors 
of workingmen, believe it, and calm their conscience by it. 
Let us see in what way it is justified in different classes of 
men, who have freed themselves from labor in our own days. 

I serve men by my activity in state or church, —as king, 
minister, archbishop; I serve men by my trading or by in¬ 
dustry ; I serve men by my activity in the departments of 
science or art. 

By our activities we are all as necessary to the people as 
they are to us. 

So say various men of to-day, who have freed themselves 
from laboring. 

Let us consider seriatim those principles upon which they 
base the usefulness of their activity. 

There are only two indications of the usefulness of any 
activity of one man for another: an exterior indication, — 
the acknowledgment of the utility of activity by those to 
whom it is produced ; and an interior indication,—the desire 
to be of use to others lying at the root of the activity of the 
one who is trying to be of use. 

Statesmen (I include the Church dignitaries appointed by 


148 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


the government in the category of statesmen) are of use to 
those whom they govern. The emperor, the king, the pres¬ 
ident of a republic, the prime minister, the minister of justice, 
the minister of war, the minister of public instruction, the 
bishop, and all under them, who serve the state, all live, 
having freed themselves from the struggle of mankind for 
existence, and having laid all the burden of this struggle upon 
other men, upon the ground that their non-activity compen¬ 
sates for this. 

Let us apply the first indication to those for whose welfare 
the activity of statesmen is bestowed. Do they, I ask, rec¬ 
ognize the usefulness of this activity? 

Yes, it is recognized : most men consider statesmanship 
necessary to them ; the majority recognize the usefulness of 
this activity in principle; but in all its manifestations as 
known to us, in all particular cases as known to 11 s, the use¬ 
fulness of each of the institutions and of each of the mani¬ 
festations of this activity is not only denied by those for 
whose advantage it is performed, but the} 7 assert that this 
activity is even pernicious and hurtful. There is no state 
function or social activit} 7 which is not considered by many 
men to be hurtful: there is no institution which is not con¬ 
sidered pernicious,—courts of justice, banks, local self-gov¬ 
ernment, police, clergy. Every state activit} 7 , from the 
minister down to the policeman, from the bishop to the sex¬ 
ton, is considered by some men to be useful, and b}* others 
to be pernicious. And this is the case, not only in Russia, 
but throughout the world, in France as well as in America. 

All the activity of the republican party is considered per¬ 
nicious by the radical party, and vice versa: all the activity 
of the radical party, if the power is in their hands, is con¬ 
sidered bad by the republican and other parties. But not 
only is it a fact that the activity of statesmen is never con¬ 
sidered by all men to be useful, their activity has, besides, 
this peculiarity, that it must always be carried out by vio¬ 
lence, and that, in order to attain this end, there are necessary, 
murders, executions, prisons, taxes raised by force, and so 
on. 

It therefore appears, that besides the fact that the useful¬ 
ness of state activity is not recognized by all men, and is 
always denied by one portion of men, this usefulness has 
the peculiarity of vindicating itself always by violence. 

And therefore the usefulness of state activity cannot be 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


149 


confirmed by the fact that it is recognized by those men for 
whom it is performed. 

Let us apply the second test: let us ask statesmen them¬ 
selves, from the tsar down to the policeman, from the presi¬ 
dent to the secretary, from the patriarch to the sexton, 
begging for a sincere answer, whether, in occupying their 
respective positions, the}’ have in view the good which they 
wish to do for men, or something else. In their desire to fill 
the situation of a tsar, a president, a minister, a police- 
sergeant, a sexton, a teacher, are they moved by the 
desire of being useful to men, or for their own personal 
advantage? And the answer of sincere men would be, that 
their chief motive is their own personal advantage. 

And so it appears fihat one class of men, who utilize the 
labor of others who perish by their labors, compensate for 
such an undoubted evil by an activity which is always con¬ 
sidered by a great many men to be not only useless, but 
pernicious.; which cannot be voluntarily accepted by men, 
but to which they must always be compelled, and the aim of 
which is not the benefit of others, but the personal advan¬ 
tage of those men who perform it. 

What is it, then, that confirms the theory that state activity 
is useful for men? Only the fact that those men who per¬ 
form it, firmly believe it to be useful, and that it has been 
always in existence ; but so have always been not only use¬ 
less institutions, but very pernicious ones, like slavery, 
prostitution, and wars. 

Business people (merchants, manufacturers, railway pro¬ 
prietors, bankers, land-owners) believe in the fact that they 
do a good which undoubtedly compensates for the harm done 
by them. Upon what grounds do they believe it? To the 
question by whom the usefulness of their activity is recog¬ 
nized, men in church and in state are able to point to the 
thousands and millions of working-people who in principle 
recognize the usefulness of state and church activity; but to 
whom will bankers, distillers, manufacturers of velvet, of 
bronzes, of looking-glasses, to say nothing of guns, — to 
whom will they point when we ask them is their usefulness 
recognized by the majority ? 

if there can be found men who recognize the usefulness of 
manufacturing chintzes, rails, beer, and such like things, 
there will be found also a still greater number of men who 
consider the manufacture of these articles pernicious. 


150 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


And as for the activity of merchants who raise the prices 
of all articles, and that of land-owners, nobody would even 
attempt to justify it. 

Besides, this activity is always associated-with the harm 
done to working-people and with violence, if less direct than 
that of the state, yet just as cruel in its consequences : for 
the activities displayed in industry and in trade are entirely 
based upon taking advantage of the wants of working-people 
in every form, in order to compel workingmen to hard and 
hated labor; to buy all goods cheap, and to sell to the people 
the articles necessary for them at the highest possible price ; 
and to raise the interest on money. From whatever point 
we consider their activity, we see that the usefulness of busi¬ 
ness-men is not recognized by those for whom it is expended, 
neither in principle nor in particular cases; and by the 
majority their activity is considered to be directly pernicious. 
If we were to apply the second test, and to ask, What is the 
chief motive of the activity of business-men? we should 
receive a still more determinate answer than that on the 
activity’ of statesmen. 

If a statesman says that besides a personal advantage he 
has in view the common, benefit, we cannot help believing 
him, and each of us knows such men ; but a business-man, 
from the very nature of his occupations, cannot have in view 
a common advantage, and would be ridiculous in the sight of 
his fellows if he were in his business aiming at something 
besides the increasing of his own wealth and the keeping of 
it. And, therefore, working-people do not consider the 
activity of business-men of any help to them. Their 
activity is associated with violence towards such people ; and 
its object is not their good, but always and only personal 
advantage ; and lo! strange to say, these business-men are 
so assured of their own usefulness that they boldly, for the 
sake of this imaginary good, do an undoubted, obvious harm 
to workingmen by extricating themselves from laboring, and 
consuming the labor of the working-classes. Men of science 
and of art have freed themselves from laboring by putting 
this labor on others, and live with a quiet conscience, think¬ 
ing the} 7 bring a sufficient advautage to other men to com¬ 
pensate for it. 

On what is their assurance based? Let us ask them as we 
have done statesmen and business-men. 

Is the utility of the arts and sciences recognized by all, or 
even by the majority, of working-people? 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THENf 


151 


We shall receive a very deplorable answer. The activity 
of men in church and state is recognized to be useful in 
theory by almost all, and in application by the majority of 
those for whom it is performed; the activity of business-men 
is recognized as useful by a small number of working-people ; 
but the activity of men of science and of art is not recog¬ 
nized to be useful by any of the working-class. The useful¬ 
ness of their activity is recognized only by those who are 
engaged in it, or who desire to practise it. Those who bear 
upon their shoulders all the labor of life, and who feed and 
clothe the men of science and art, cannot recognize the useful¬ 
ness of the activity of these men, because they cannot even 
form any idea about an activity which always appears to 
workingmen useless and even depraving. 

Thus, without any exception, working-people think the 
same of universities, libraries, conservatories, picture and 
statue galleries, and theatres, which are built at their expense. 

A workingman considers this activity to be so decidedly 
pernicious that he does not send his children to be taught; 
and in order to compel people to accept this activity, it has 
been everywhere found necessary to introduce a law com¬ 
pelling parents to send the children to school. 

A workingman always looks at this activity with ill-will, 
and only ceases to look at it so when he ceases to be a work¬ 
ingman, and having saved money, and been educated, he 
passes out of the class of working-people into the class of 
men who live upon the necks of others. 

And notwithstanding the fact that the usefulness of the 
activity of men of science and art is not recognized, and even 
cannot be recognized, by any workman, these men are all the 
same compelled to make a sacrifice for such an activity. 

A statesman simply sends another to the guillotine or to 
prison ; a business-man, utilizing the labor of another, takes 
away from him his last resource, leaving him the alternative 
of starvation, or labor destructive of his health and life: but 
a man of science or of art seemingly compels nobody to do 
any thing ; he merely offers the good he has done to those who 
are willing to take it; but, in order to be able to make his 
productions undesirable to the working-people, he takes 
away from the people, by violence, through the statesmen, 
the greatest part of their labor for the building and keeping 
open of academies, universities, colleges, schools, museums, 
libraries, conservatories, and for the wages for himself and 
his fellows. 


152 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


But if we were to ask men of science and art about the 
object which they are pursuing in their activity, we should 
receive the most astonishing replies. 

A statesman would answer that his aim was the common 
welfare; and in his answer, there would be an admixture of 
truth confirmed by public opinion. 

In the answer of the business-man, that his aim was social 
welfare, there would be less probability ; but we could admit 
even this also. 

But the answer of men of science and art strikes one at 
once by its want of proof and by its effrontery. Such men 
say, without bringing any proofs, just as priests used to do 
in olden times, that their activity is the most important of 
all, and the most necessary for all men, and that without it 
all mankind would go to ruin. They assert that it is so, 
notwithstanding the fact that nobody except they themselves 
either understands or acknowledges their activity, and not¬ 
withstanding the fact that, according to their own definition, 
true science and true art should not have a utilitarian aim. 

These men are occupied with the matter they like, without 
troubling themselves what advantage will come out of it to 
men ; and they are always assured that they are doing the 
most important thing, and the most necessary for all man¬ 
kind. 

So that while a sincere statesman, acknowledging that the 
chief motive of his activity is a personal one, tries to be as 
useful as possible to the working-people ; while a business¬ 
man, acknowledging the egotism of his activity, tries to 
give it an appearance of being one of universal utility,— 
men of science and art do not consider it necessary to seem 
to shelter themselves under a pretence of usefulness : they 
deny even the object of usefulness, so sure are they, not 
only of the usefulness, but even of the sacredness, of their 
own "business. 

And now it turns out that the third class of men, who 
have freed themselves from labor, and have laid it on other 
men, are occupied with things which are totally incompre¬ 
hensible to working-people, and which these people consider 
to be trifles, and often very pernicious trifles; and are occu¬ 
pied with these things without any consideration of their 
usefulness, but merely for the gratification of their own 
pleasure: it turns out that these men are, from some reason 
or other, quite assured that their activity will always produce 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 153 

that without which working-people would never be able* to 
exist. 

Men have freed themselves from laboring for their living, 
and have thrown the work upon others, who perish under it : 
they utilize this labor, and assert that their occupations, which 
are incomprehensible to all other men, and which are not 
directed to useful aims, compensate for all the evil they are 
doing to men by freeing themselves from the labor of earn¬ 
ing their livelihood, and swallowing up the labor of others. 

The statesman, in order to compensate for that undoubted 
and obvious evil which he does to man by freeing himself 
from the struggle with nature, and by appropriating the 
labor of others, does men another obvious and undoubted 
harm by countenancing all sorts of violence. 

The business-man, in order to compensate for that un¬ 
doubted and obvious harm which he does to men by using 
up their labour, tries to earn for himself as much wealth as 
possible; that is, as much of other men’s labor as pos¬ 
sible. 

The man of science and art, in compensating for the 
same undoubted and obvious harm which he does to working- 
people, is occupied w r ith matters to which he feels attracted, 
and which is quite incomprehensible to working-people, and 
which, according to his own assertion, in order to be a true 
one, ought not to aim at usefulness. 

And therefore, all these men are quite sure that their 
right of utilizing other men’s labor is secure. Yet it seems 
obvious that all those men who have freed themselves from 
the labor of earning their livelihood have no ground for 
doing this. 

But, strange to say, these men firmly believe in their own 
righteousness, and live as they do with an easy conscience. 
There must be some plausible ground, some false belief, at 
the bottom of such a profound error. 


XXVIII. 

And, in reality, the position in which men, living by other 
men’s labor, are placed, is based, not only upon a certain 
belief, but upon an entire doctrine; and not only on one 
doctrine, but on three, which have grown one upon another 
during centuries, and are now fused together into an awful 


154 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


deceit, or humbug as the English call it, which hides from 
men their unrighteousness. 

The oldest of these in our world, which justifies the treason 
of men against the fundamental duty of labor to earn their 
livelihood, was the Church-Christian doctrine, according to 
which men, by the will of God, differ one from another, as 
the sun differs from the moon and the stars, and as one star 
differs from another. Some men God ordains to have domin¬ 
ion over all; others to have power over many; others, still, 
over a few; and the remainder are ordained by God to 
obey. 

This doctrine, though already shaken to its foundations, 
still continues to influence some men, so that many who do 
not accept it, who often even ignore the existence of it, are, 
nevertheless, guided by it. 

The second is what I cannot help terming the State-philo¬ 
sophical doctrine. According to it, as fully developed by 
Hegel, all that exists is reasonable, and the established order 
of life is constant and sustained, not merely by men, but as 
the only possible form of the manifestation of the spirit, or, 
general^, of the life of mankind. 

This doctrine, too, is no longer accepted by men who direct 
social opinion, and it holds its position onlj T by the property 
of inertia. 

The last doctrine, which is now ruling the minds of men, 
and on which is based the justification as well of leading 
statesmen as also of leading men of business and of science 
and art, is a scientific one, not in the evident sense of the 
word, meaning knowledge generally, but in the sense of a 
knowledge peculiar in form as well as in matter, termed sci¬ 
ence in particular. On this new doctrine particularly is 
based in our days the justification of man’s idleness, hiding 
from him his treason against his calling. 

This new doctrine appeared in Europe contemporaneous^ 
with a large class of rich and idle people, who served neither 
the church nor the state, and who were in want of a justifi¬ 
cation of their position. 

Not very long ago in France, before the revolution in Eu¬ 
rope, it was always the case that all non-working people, in 
order to have a right to utilize other men’s labor, were 
obliged to have some definite occupation, — to serve in the 
church, the state, or the army. 

Men who served the government, governed the people; 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 155 

those who served the church, taught the people divine truths ; 
and those who served the army, protected the people. 

Only these three classes of men — the clergy, the states¬ 
men, and the military men — claimed for themselves the 
right of utilizing workingmen’s labor, and they could always 
point out their services to the people : the remaining rich 
men, who had not this justification, were despised, and, feel¬ 
ing their own want of right, were ashamed of their wealth 
and of their idleness. But as time went on, this class of rich 
people, who did not belong either to the clergy, to the gov¬ 
ernment, or to the army, owing to the vices of these three 
classes, increased in number, and became a powerful party. 
They were in want of a justification of their position. And 
one was invented for them. A century had not elapsed when 
the men who did not serve either the state or the church, 
and who took no part whatever in their affairs, received the 
same right to live by other men’s labor as the former classes ; 
and they not only left off being ashamed of their wealth and 
idleness, but began to consider their position quite justified. 
And the number of such men has increased, and is still in¬ 
creasing in our days. 

And the most wonderful of all is this, that these men, the 
same whose claims to be freed from laboring were unrecog¬ 
nized not long ago, now consider themselves alone to be fully 
right, and are attacking the former three classes, — the ser¬ 
vants of the church, state, and army, — alleging their exemp¬ 
tion from labor to be be unjust, and often even considering 
their activity to be directly pernicious. And what is still 
more wonderful is this, that the former servants of church, 
state, and army, do not now lean upon the divineness of 
their calling, nor even upon the philosophy which considers 
the state necessary for individual development, but they set 
aside these supports which have so long maintained them, 
and are now seeking the same supports on which the new 
reigning class of men, who have found a novel justification, 
stands, and at the head of which are the men of science 
and art. 

If a statesman now sometimes, appealing to old memories, 
justifies his position by the fact that he was set in it bj T God, 
or by the fact that the state is a form of the development of 
personality, he does it because he is behind the age, and he 
feels that nobody believes him. 

In order to justify himself effectually, he ought to find now 


156 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


neither theological nor philosophical, but other new, scien¬ 
tific supports. 

It is necessary to point to the principle of nationalities, or 
to that of the development of an organism; and to gain over 
the ruling class, as in the Middle Ages, it was necessary to 
gain over the clergy; and as at the end of the last century, 
it was necessary to obtain the sanction of philosophers, as 
seen in the case of Frederick the Great and Catherine of 
Russia. If now a rich man, after the old fashion, says 
sometimes that it is God’s providence which makes him rich, 
or if he points to the importance of a nobility for the w r elfare 
of a state, he does it because he is behind the times. 

In order to justify himself completely, he must point to his 
furthering progress and civilization by improving the modes 
of production, by lowering the prices of consumption, by 
establishing an intercourse between nations. A rich man 
ought to think and to speak in scientific language, and, as 
the clergy formerly, he has to offer sacrifices to the ruling 
class: he must publish magazines and books, provide him¬ 
self with a picture-gallery, a musical society, a kindergarten 
or a technical school. The ruling class is the class of learned 
men and artists of a definite character. They possess com¬ 
plete justification for having freed themselves from laboring ; 
and upon this justification (as in former times upon the 
theological justification, and afterwards upon the philosophical 
one) all is based : and it is these men who now give the 
diploma of exemption to other classes. 

The class of men who now feel completely justified in free¬ 
ing themselves from labor, is that of men of science, and 
particularly of experimental, positive, critical, evolutional 
science, and of artists who develop their ideas according to 
this tendency. 

If a learned man or an artist, after the old fashion, speaks 
nowadays about prophecy, revelation, or the manifestation 
of the spirit, he does so because he is behind the age, but he 
will not succeed in justifying himself: in order to stand firm 
he must try to associate his activity with experimental, posi¬ 
tive, critical science, and he must make this science the 
fundamental principle of his activity. Then only would the 
science or the art with which he is occupied appear to be a 
true one, and he would then stand in our days on firm ground, 
and then will there be no doubt as to the usefulness he is 
bringing to mankind. The justification of all those who have 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 157 

freed themselves from laboring is based upon experimental, 
critical, positive science. 

The theological and philosophical explanations have already 
had their day: they timidly and bashfully now introduce 
themselves to notice, and try to humor their scientific usurper, 
which, however, boldly knocks down and destroys the rem¬ 
nants of the past, everywhere taking its place, and with assur¬ 
ance in its own firmness lifts aloft its head. 

The theological justification maintained that men by their 
destination are called, — some to govern, others to obey; 
some to live sumptuously, others to labor: and therefore 
those who believed in the revelation of God could not doubt 
the lawfulness of the position of those men, who, according 
to the will of God, are called to govern and to be rich. 

The state-philosophical justification used to say, The state 
with all its institutions and differences of classes, according 
to rights and possessions, is that historical form which is 
necessary for the right manifestation of the spirit in man¬ 
kind ; and therefore the situation which every one occupies 
in state and in society according to his rights and to his pos¬ 
sessions must be such as to insure the sound life of mankind. 

The scientific theory says, All this is nonsense and super¬ 
stition : the one is the fruit of the theological period of 
thought, and the other of the metaphysical period. 

For the stud}' of the laws of the life of human societies, 
there is only one sure method, — that of a positive, experi¬ 
mental, critical science. It is only sociology based upon 
biology, based again upon all other positive scieuces, which 
is able to give us new laws of the life of mankind. Man¬ 
kind, or human societies, are organisms either already perfect, 
or in a state of development subject to all the laws of the 
evolution of organisms. One of the first of these laws is the 
division of labor among the portions of the organs. If some 
men govern, and others obey, some live in opulence, and others 
in want, then this takes place, neither according to the .will of 
God, nor because the state is the form of the manifestation of 
personality, but because in societies as in organisms a division 
of labor takes place which is necessary for the life of the 
whole. Some men perform in societies the muscular part of 
labor, and others the mental. 

Upon this doctrine is built the ruling excuse of the age. 


158 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN! 


XXIX. 


Christ teaches men in a new way, and this teaching is 
written down in the Gospels. 

It is first persecuted, and then accepted; and upon it at 
once a complete system of theological dogma is invented, 
which is thereafter accepted for the teaching of Christ. The 
system is absurd, it has no foundation ; but by virtue of it, 
men are led to believe that they may continue to live in an 
evil way, and none the less be Christians. And this con¬ 
clusion is so agreeable to the mass of weak men, who have 
no affection for moral effort, that the system is eagerly ac¬ 
cepted, not only as true, but even as the Divine truth as 
revealed by God himself. And the invention becomes the 
groundwork on which for centuries theologians build their 
theories. 

Then by degrees these learned men diverge by various 
channels into special systems of their own, and finally en¬ 
deavor to overthrow each other’s theories. They begin to 
feel there is something amiss, and cease to understand what 
they themselves are talking about. But the crowd still 
requires them to expound its favorite instruction ; and thus 
the theologians, pretending both to understand and believe 
what they are saying, continue to dispense it. 

In process of time, however, the conclusions drawn from 
theological conceptions cease to be necessary to the masses, 
who, then, peeping into the very sanctuaries of their augurs, 
discover them to be utterly void of those glorious and indu¬ 
bitable truths which the mysteries of theology had seemed to 
suggest. 

The same happened to philosophy, not in the sense of the 
wisdom of men like Confucius or Epictetus, but with profes¬ 
sional philosophy, when it humored the instincts of the crowd 
of rich and idle people. Not long ago in the learned world, 
a moral philosophy was in fashion, according to which it ap¬ 
peared that every thing that is, is reasonable ; that there is 
neither good nor evil; that man has not to struggle with evil, 
but has merely to manifest the spirit, some in military ser¬ 
vice, some in courts of justice, and some on the violin. 

Many and various were the expressions of human wisdom, 
and as such were known to the men of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, — Rousseau, Pascal, Lessing, and Spinoza ; and all the 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


159 


wisdom of antiquity was expounded, but none of its systems 
laid hold of the crowd. We cannot say that Hegel’s success 
was due to the harmony of his theory. We had no less 
harmonious theories from Descartes, Leibnitz, Fichte, and 
Schopenhauer. 

There was only one reason for the fact that this doctrine 
became for a short time the belief of the civilized world, the 
same which had caused the success of theology ; to wit, that 
the deductions of this philosophical theory humored the 
weak side of men’s nature. It said, All is reasonable, all 
is good ; nobody is to blame for any thing. 

And as at first with the church upon theological founda¬ 
tions, so also, with the philosophy of Hegel for a base, a 
Babel’s tower was built (some who are behind the age, are 
still sitting upon it) ; and here again was a confusion of 
tongues, men feeling that they themselves did not know of 
what they were talking, but trying to conceal their ignorance, 
and to keep their prestige before the crowd. 

When I began life, Hegelianism was the order of the day; 
it was in the very air you breathed; it found its expression 
in newspapers and magazines, in lectures upon history and 
upon law, in novels, in tracts, in art, in sermons, in conver¬ 
sation. A man who did not know Hegel, had no right to 
open his mouth; those who desired to learn the truth, were 
studying Hegel, — every thing pointed to him ; and lo! 
forty years have elapsed, and nothing is left of him ; there is 
no remembrance of him ; all is as though he had never ex¬ 
isted. And the most remarkable of all is, that as false 
Christianity, so also Hegelianism has fallen, not because 
some one had refuted or overthrown it; no, it is now as it 
was before, but both have only become no longer necessary 
for the learned, educated world. 

If, at the present time, any man of culture is questioned 
about the system of theological dogma, he will neither contra¬ 
dict nor argue, but will simply ask, *‘ Why should I believe 
these dogmas? ” — “ What good are they to me?” 

So also with Hegelianism. No one of our day will argue 
its theses. He will only inquire, “ What Spirit? ” “ Where 
did it come from?” “With what purpose?” “What good 
will it do me?” Not very long ago the sages of Hege¬ 
lianism were solemnly teaching the crowd; and the crowd, 
understanding nothing, blindly believed all, finding the 
confirmation of what suited them, and thinking that what 


160 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


seemed to them to be not quite clear or even contradictory, 
on the heights of philosophy was clearer than day: but 
time went on, the theory was worn out, a new one appeared 
in its place, the former one was no longer demanded, and 
again the crowd looked into the mysterious temples of the 
augurs, and saw there was nothing there, and that nothing 
had ever been there but words, very dark and meaningless. 

(This happened within my memory.) These things 
happened, we are told, because they were ravings of the 
theological and metaphysical period; but now we have a 
critical, positive science, which will not deceive us, because 
it is based upon induction and experience. Now our knowl¬ 
edge is no longer uncertain as it formerly was, and it is 
only by following it that one can find the answer to all the 
questions of life. 

But this is exactly the same that was said by the old 
teachers, and they certainly were no fools, and we know 
that among them were men of immense intellect; and within 
my memory the disciples of Hegel said exactly the same 
thing, with no less assurance and no less acknowledgment 
on the side of the crowd of so-called educated people. And 
such men as our Herzen, Stankievich, Byelinsky, were no 
fools either. But why, then, has this wonderful thing hap¬ 
pened that clever men preached with the greatest assurance, 
and the crowd accepted with veneration such groundless 
and meaningless doctrines? The reason of it is only that 
these doctrines justified men in their bad mode of living. 

A very commonplace English writer, whose books are 
now almost forgotten, and recognized as the emptiest of 
all empty ones, wrote a tract upon population, in which he 
invented an imaginary law that the means of living does 
not increase with increase of population. This sham law 
the author dressed out with formulae of mathematics, which 
have no foundation whatever, and published it. Judged 
by the lightness of mind and the want of talent displayed 
in this treatise, we might suppose that it would have passed 
unnoticed, and been forgotten as all other writings of the 
same author have been ; but it turned out quite differently. 
The author who wrote it became at once a scientific au¬ 
thority, and has maintained this high position for nearly 
half a century. Malthus ! The Malthusian theory, — the 
law of the increase of population in geometrical progression, 
and the increase of means of living in arithmetical progres- 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN? 


161 


sion, and the natural and prudent means of restraining the 
increase of population, — all these became scientific, un¬ 
doubted truths which have never been verified, but, being 
accepted as axioms, have served for further deductions. 

Thus learned, educated men were deceived; whereas 
in the crowd of idle men, there was a devout trust in the 
great laws, discovered by Malthus. How, then, did this hap¬ 
pen? These seem to be scientific deductions, which had 
nothing in common with the instincts of the crowd. 

But this is so only to those who believe science to be some¬ 
thing self-existent, like the Church, not liable to errors, and 
not merely the thoughts of weak men liable to mistakes, who 
only for importance’ sake call by a pompous word, science, 
their own thoughts and words. It was only necessary to 
draw practical conclusions from the Malthusian theory in 
order to see that it was quite a human one with very de¬ 
terminate aims. 

The deductions which followed directly from this theory 
were the following: The miserable condition of working- 
people does not come from the cruelt}', egotism, and un¬ 
reasonableness of rich and strong men, but it exists according 
to an unchangeable law which does not depend upon man, 
and, if anybod} T is to blame, it is the starving working- 
people themselves: why do these fools come into the world 
when they know that they will not have enough to eat? and 
therefore the wealthy and powerful classes are not at all 
to blame for any thing, and they may quietly continue to 
live as they have done. 

This conclusion, precious to the crowd of idle men, in¬ 
duced all learned men to overlook the incorrectness and 
total arbitrariness of the deductions ; and the crowd of edu¬ 
cated idle people, instinctively guessing to what these 
deductions led, greeted the theory with delight, set upon 
it the seal of truth, and cherished it during half a century. 
The reason for all this was, that these doctrines justified 
men in their bad mode of life. 

Is not the same cause at the bottom of the self-assurance 
of men of positive, critical, experimental science, and of 
the reverent regard of the crowd to what they preach ? At 
first it appears strange that the theory of evolution justifies 
men in their unrighteousness, and that the scientific theory 
has only to do with facts, and does nothing else than observe 
facts. But it only seems so. 


162 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


So it had been with theological teaching; theology 
seemed to be occupied only with doctrines, and to have 
nothing to do with the lives of men: so it had been 
with philosophy, which also seemed to be occupied only with 
facts. 

So it had been with the teaching of Hegel on a large 
scale, and with the theory of Malthus on a small one. 
Hegelianism seemed to be occupied merely with its logical 
constructions, and to have nothing to do with the lives of 
men ; so with the theory of Malthus, which seemed to be 
occupied exclusively with statistics. 

But it only seemed so. 

Modern science is also occupied exclusively with facts: it 
studies facts. 

But what facts? Why such facts, and not others? 

The men of modern science are very fond of speaking 
with a solemn assurance, “ We study facts alone,” imagin¬ 
ing that these words have some meaning. 

To study facts alone is quite impossible, because the num¬ 
ber of facts, which may be objects of our study, are count¬ 
less, in the strict sense of the word. 

Before beginning to study facts, one must have some 
theory, according to which facts are studied; that is, these 
or those being selected from the countless number of facts. 
And this theory indeed exists, and is even very definitely 
expressed, though many of the agents of modern science 
ignore it; that is, do not want to know it, or really do not 
know it, and sometimes pretend not to know it. 

Thus matters stood before with all most important beliefs. 

The foundations of each are always given in theory; and 
so-called learned men seek only for further deductions from 
various foundations given to them, though sometimes ignor¬ 
ing even these. 

But a fundamental theory must always be present. So 
is it also now: modern science selects its facts upon the 
ground of a determinate theory, which sometimes it knows, 
sometimes does not wish to know, sometimes really does not 
know ; but it exists. And the theory is this : All mankind 
is an undying organism ; men are particles of the organs of 
this organism, having each his special calling for the service 
'of the whole. As the cells, growing into an organism, divide 
among themselves the labor of the struggle for existence of 
the. whole organism, increase one capacity, and diminish 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN? 


163 


another, and all together form an organ in order better to sat¬ 
isfy the wants of the whole organism; and as among social 
animals,—ants and bees, — the individuals divide the labor 
among themselves (queen-bees lay eggs, drone-bees fecun¬ 
date, working-bees labor for the life of the whole), — so also 
in mankind and in human societies there takes place the 
same differentiation and integration of the parts. And 
therefore, in order to find the law of man’s life, we must study 
the laws of the lives and development of organisms. And 
in these we find the following laws : That each phenomenon 
is followed by more than one consequence; the failure of 
uniformity; the law of uniformity and diversity, and so on. 
All this seems to be very innocent, but we need only draw 
deductions from these observations of facts in order to see 
at once to what they are tending. 

These facts lead to one thing, — the acknowledgment that 
the existence in human societies of division of activities is 
organic ; that is, necessary. And they therefore induce us to 
consider the unjust position in which we are, who have freed 
ourselves from laboring, not from the point of reasonable¬ 
ness and justice, but merely as an indubitable fact which 
confirms a general law. Moral philosophy used also to 
justify every cruelty and wickedness ; but there it turned out 
to be philosophical, and therefore incorrect: but according to 
science, the same thing turns out to be scientific, and therefore 
unquestionable. 

How, then, can we help accepting such a fine theory! We 
need only look at human society merety as at an object of 
observation, and we may quietly devour the labor of perish¬ 
ing men, calming ourselves with the idea that our activity as 
a dancing-master, a lawyer, a doctor, a philosopher, an 
actor, an investigator of the theory of mediumism and of 
forms of atoms, and so on, is a functional activity of the 
organism of mankind, and therefore there cannot be a ques¬ 
tion whether it is just that I should live doing only what is 
pleasant, as there can be no question whether the division of 
labor between a mental and a muscular cell is just or not. 
IIow, then, can we help accepting such a nice theory which 
enables us afterwards forever to put our conscience into our 
pockets, and live a completely unbridled, animal life, feeling 
under our feet a firm, scientific support? And it is upon this 
new belief that the justification of idleness and the cruelty 
of men is built. 


164 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN t 


XXX. 

This doctrine had its commencement about half a century 
ago. Its chief founder was the French philosopher Comte. 
Comte, being a lover of systematic theory, and at the same 
time a man of religious tendency, was impressed by the then 
new physiological researches of Bichat; and he conceived 
the old idea, expressed in by-gone days by Menenius 
Agrippa, that human societies, indeed all human-kind, may 
be regarded as one whole, an organism ; and men, — as live 
particles of separate organs, each having his definite 
destination to fulfil in the service of the whole organism. 

Comte was so fascinated by this idea, that he founded 
upon it his philosophical theory; and this theory so capti¬ 
vated him, that he quite forgot that the point of departure 
he had started from was no more than a pretty comparison, 
suitable enough iu a fable, but in no way justifiable as the 
foundation of a science. As often happens, he took his pet 
hypothesis for an axiom, and so imagined that his whole 
theory was based upon the most firm and positive 
foundations. 

According to his theory, it appeared that, as mankind is 
an organism, therefore the knowledge of what man is and 
what ought to be his relation to the world, is only possible 
through a knowledge of the properties of this organism. 
In order to learn these properties, man is fitted to make 
observations upon other lower organisms, and draw deduc¬ 
tions from their lives. 

Therefore, first, the true and exclusive method of science, 
according to Comte, is the inductive one, and science is only 
science when it has experiment for its basis ; secondly, the 
final aim and the summit of science becomes the new 
science concerning the imaginary organism of mankind, or 
the organic being, -— mankind ; this new hypothetic science 
is sociology ; from this view of science, it generally turns out 
that all former knowledge was false, and that the whole 
history of mankind, in the sense of its self-consciousness, 
divides itself into three, or rather into two, periods : first, 
the theological and metaphysical period, from the beginning 
of the world to Comte ; and secondly, the modern period of 
true science, positive science, beginning with Comte. 

All this was very well, but there was a single mistake in 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


165 


it; it was this : that all this edifice was built upon the sand, 
upon an arbitrary and incorrect assertion that mankind, 
collectively considered, was ail organism. This assertion 
was arbitrary, because there is no more reason why, if we 
acknowledge the existence of mankind to be an organism, 
we should refuse to allow the correctness of all the various 
theological propositions. 

It was incorrect, because to the idea of mankind, that is, 
of men, the definition of an organism was incorrectly added, 
whereas mankind lacks the essential characteristic of an 
organism, —a centre of sensation or consciousness. We call 
an elephant, as well as a bacterium, organisms, only because 
we suppose by analogy in these beings unification of 
sensations or consciousness. As for human societies and 
mankind, the } 7 lack this essential; and therefore, however 
many other general character-signs we may find out in 
mankind and in an organism, without this, the acknowledg¬ 
ment of mankind to be an organism is incorrect. 

But notwithstanding the arbitrariness and incorrectness of 
the fundamental proposition of positive philosophy, it was 
accepted b } 7 the so-called educated world with great 
sympathy, because of that great fact important for the 
crowd, that it afforded a justification of the existing order of 
things by recognizing the lawfulness of the existing division 
of labor; that is, of violence in mankind. It is remarkable 
in this respect that from the writings of Comte composed of 
two parts, — a positive philosophy and a positive politics, — 
by the learned world, only the first part was accepted, that 
which justified upon new experimental principles the exist¬ 
ing evil in human society : the second part, treating of the 
moral altruistic duties, following from this recognition of 
mankind to be an organism, was considered not only to be 
unimportant, but even unscientific. 

Here the same thing was repeated which occurred with the 
two parts of Kant’s writings : the u Critique of Pure Reason ” 
was accepted by science; but the “ Critique of Practical 
Reason,” that part which contains the essence of moral 
doctrine, was rejected. In the teaching of Comte, that was 
recognized to be scientific which humored the reigning evil. 

But the positive philosophy, accepted by the crowd, based 
upon an arbitrary and incorrect supposition, was by itself 
too ill-grounded, and therefore too unsteady, and could not 
be sustained by itself. 


166 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


And now among all the idle play of ideas of so-called 
men of science, there also appeared a similarly arbitrary and 
incorrect assertion, not a new one at all, to the effect that 
all living beings, that is, organisms, proceed one from 
another; not only one organism from another, but one 
organism from many ; that during a very long period, a 
million of years for instance, not only a fish and a duck may 
have proceeded from one and the same forefather, but also 
one organism might have proceeded from many separate 
organisms; so, for instance, out of a swarm of bees a 
single animal may proceed. And this arbitrary and incorrect 
assertion was accepted by the learned world with still 
greater sympathy. 

This assertion was an arbitrary one, because nobod} T has 
ever seen how one kind of organism is made from others ; 
and therefore the hypothesis about the origin of species will 
alwaj’s remain a mere supposition, and never will become an 
experimental fact. 

This hypothesis was incorrect because the solution of the 
problem of the origin of species by the theory that they had 
their origin in the law of inheritance and accommodation 
during an infinitely long time, was not at all a solution 
of the problem, but the mere iteration of the question in 
another form. 

According to the solution of this problem by Moses (in 
opposition to which consists all the object of Comte’s the¬ 
ory), it appeared that the variety of the species of living 
beings proceeded from the will of God and his infinite om¬ 
nipotence: according to the theory of evolution, it appears 
that the variety of species of living beings‘proceeded by 
themselves in consequence of the infinite variety of conditions 
of inheritance and environment in an infinite period of time. 

The theory of evolution, speaking plainly, asserts only 
that by chance in an infinite period of time any thing you 
like may proceed from any thing else you choose. 

This is no answer to the question ; it is simply the same 
question put differently: instead of will is put chance, and 
the co-efficient of the infinite is transferred from omnipotence 
to time. 

But this new assertion, enforced by Darwin’s followers in 
an arbitrary and inaccurate spirit, maintained the former 
assertion of Comte, and therefore it became a revelation for 
our time, and the foundation of all sciences, even that of 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN1 


167 


the history of philosophy and religion ; and besides, according 
to the naive confession of the very founder of Darwin’s 
theory, this idea was awakened in him by the law of Malthas ; 
and therefore he pointed to the struggle for existence of not 
only of men, but of all living beings, as to a fundamental 
law of every living thing. And this was exactly what was 
wanted by the crowd of idle people for their own justification. 

Two unstable theories which could not stand upon their 
own feet supported each other, and received a show of 
stability. Both the theories bore in them a sense, precious 
for the crowd, that for the existing evil in human societies 
men are not to be blamed, that the existing order is what 
ought to be, and thus the new theory was accepted by the 
crowd in the sense which was wanted by them, with full 
confidence and unprecedented enthusiasm. 

And so the new scientific doctrine was founded upon two 
arbitrary and incorrect propositions, which were accepted in 
the same way as dogmas of faith are accepted. Both in 
matter and form, this new doctrine is remarkably similar to 
the Clmrch-Christian one. In matter, the similarity lies in 
the fact, that in both doctrines alike, a fantastical meaning is 
attached to really existing things, and this artificial meaning 
is taken as the object of our research. 

In the Church-Christian doctrine, the Christ which did really 
exist is screened away by a whole system of fantastical theo¬ 
logical dogmas : in the positive doctrine, to the really exist¬ 
ing fact of live men is attributed the fantastical attributes of 
an organism. 

In form, the similarity of these two doctrines is remarkable, 
since, in both cases, a theory emanating from one class of 
men is accepted as the only and infallible truth. In the 
Church-Christian doctrine, the Church’s way of understanding 
God’s revelation to men is regarded as the sacred and only 
true one. In the doctrine of positivism, certain men’s way 
of understanding science is regarded as absolutely correct 
and true. 

As the Church-Christians regard the foundation of their 
church as the only origin of the true knowledge of God, and 
only out of a kind of courtesy admit that former believers 
may also be regarded as having formed a church; so in 
precisely the same manner does positive science, according 
to its own statement, place its origin in Comte: and its rep¬ 
resentatives, also only out of courtesy, admit the existence 


168 


WIIAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


of previous science, and that only as regarding certain 
thinkers, as, for instance, Aristotle. Both the Church and 
positive science altogether exclude the ideas of all the rest of 
mankind, and regard all knowledge outside their own as 
erroneous. 

In our time, the old dogma of evolution comes in with 
new importance to help the fundamental dogma of Comte 
concerning the organism of mankind; and from these two 
elements a new scientific doctrine has been formed. If it is 
not quite clear to a believer in the organism of mankind 
why a collection of individuals may be counted as an or¬ 
ganism, the dogma of evolution is charged with the expla¬ 
nation. This dogma is needed to reconcile the contradictions 
and certainties of the first: mankind is an organism, and 
we see that it does not contain the chief characteristic of an 
organism ; how must we account for it? 

Here the dogma of evolution comes in, and explains, 
Mankind is an organism in a state of development. If you 
accept this, you may then consider mankind as such. 

A man who is free from the positive superstition cannot 
even understand wherein lies the interest of the theory of 
the origin of species and of evolution ; and this interest is 
explained, only when we learn the fundamental dogma, that 
mankind is an organism. And as all the subtleties of 
theology are intelligible only to those who believe in its 
fundamental dogmas, so also all the subtleties of sociology, 
which now occupy the minds of all men of this recent and 
profound science, are intelligible only to believers. 

The similarity between these two doctrines holds good yet 
further. Being founded upon dogmas accepted by faith, 
these doctrines neither question nor analyze their own 
principles, which, on the other hand, are used as starting- 
points for the most extraordinary theories. The preachers 
of these call themselves, in theology’, sanctified ; in positive 
knowledge, scientific ; in both cases, infallible. And at the 
same time, they attain the most peremptory, incredible, and 
unfounded assertions, which they give forth with the greatest 
pomp and seriousness, and which arc with equal pomp and 
seriousness contradicted in all their details by others who do 
not agree, and yet who equally recognize the fundamental 
dogmas. 

The Basil the Great of scientific doctrine, Spencer, in one 
of his first writings expresses these doctrines thus : Societies 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


169 


and organisms, says he, are alike in the following points: 
First, in that, being conceived as small aggregates, they 
imperceptibly grow up in mass, so that some of them become 
ten thousand times bigger than their originals. 

Secondly, in that, while in the beginning they have such 
simple structure that they may almost be considered as 
structureless, in their growth they develop an ever-increasing 
complexity of structure. 

Thirdly, in that, though in their early undeveloped period 
there does not exist among them any dependence of particles 
one upon another, these particles by and by acquire a mutual 
dependence, which at last becomes so strong that the activity 
and the life of each part is possible only with the activity and 
the lives of all others. 

Fourthly, in this, that the life and the development of 
society is more independent and longer than the life and the 
development of every unit which goes to form it, and which 
are separately born and growing and acting and multiplying 
and dying while the political body formed of them continues 
to live one generation after another, developing in mass, in 
perfection of structure, and in functional activity. 

Then follow the points of difference between organisms 
and societies, and it is demonstrated that these differences 
are only seeming ones, and that organisms and societies are 
quite similar. For an impartial man the question at once 
arises, What are you, then, speaking about ? Why is mankind 
an organism, or something similar? 

You say that societies are similar to organisms according 
to thefte four points; but even this comparison is incorrect. 
You take only a few characteristics of an organism, and you 
then apply them to human societies. You produce four points 
of similarity, then you take the points of difference which you 
say are only seemingly so, and you conclude that human 
societies may be considered as organisms. 

But this is nothing else than an idle play of dialectics. 
Upon this ground we may consider as organism every thing 
we choose. I take the first thing which comes to my mind, — 
a forest,— as it is planted in a field and grows up : first be¬ 
ginning as a small aggregate, it imperceptibly increases in 
mass. " This is also the case with fields, when, after being 
planted the}* are gradually covered with forest-trees. Sec¬ 
ondly, in the beginning the structure of an organism is sim¬ 
ple, then the complexity increases, and so on. 


170 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


The same is the case with the forest: at first there are 
only birch-trees, then hazel, and so on ; first all the trees grow 
straight, and afterwards they interlace their branches. 
Thirdly, the dependence of the parts increases so that the 
life of each part depends upon the lives and activities of all 
the others: it is exactly the same with the forest; the nut- 
tree warms the trunks (if }^ou hew it down, the other trees 
will be frozen in winter), the underwood keeps off wind,, 
the seed-trees continue the species, the tall and leafy ones 
give shadow, and the life of each tree depends upon that of 
the rest. Fourthly, separate parts may die, but the whole 
organism continues to live. Separate trees perish, but the 
forest continues in life and growth. The same holds good 
wdtli the example so often brought by the defenders of the 
scientific doctrine. Cut off an arm,—the arm will die: we 
may say remove a tree from the shadow and the ground of a 
forest, it will die. 

Another remarkable similarity between this scientific doc¬ 
trine and the Church-Christian one, — as also in the case of 
any other theory founded upon propositions, accepted through 
faith, — lies in their capacity of being proof against logic. 

After having demonstrated that by this theory a forest 
may be considered as an organism, you think you have proved 
to the followers of the theory of organisms the incorrectness of 
their definition ? Not at all. Their definition of an organism 
is so inexact and dilatable, that tliej’ can apply it to every 
thing they like. 

Yes, they will say, you ma}’ consider the forest, too, as an 
organism. A forest is a mutual co-operationship of the in¬ 
dividuals who do not destroy each other; an aggregate: its 
parts can also pass into a closer relationship, and by differen¬ 
tiation and integration it may become an organism. 

Then you will say, that in that case, the birds too and the 
insects, and the herbs of this forest, which mutually co-oper¬ 
ate and do not destroy each other, may be considered with 
the trees to be an organism. They would agree to this 
too. According to their theory, we may consider as an 
organism every collection of living beings which mutually 
co-operate, and do not destroy one another. You may estab¬ 
lish a connection and co-operation between every thing you 
like, and, according to evolution, you may assert that from 
any thing may proceed any thing else you like, if a long enough 
period is granted. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENi 


171 


It is quite impossible to prove to a believer in a theological 
doctrine, that his doctrine is false. But one may tell him 
that if one man arbitrarily asserts one dogma, another has 
the same right arbitrarily to invent and assert another. One 
may say the same thing with yet better ground to the follow¬ 
ers of positive and evolutional science. Upon the basis of 
this science one could undertake to prove any thing one liked. 
And the strangest thing of all is, that this same positive 
science regards the scientific method as a condition of true 
knowledge, and that it has itself defined the elements of 
the scientific method. It professes that common sense is the 
scientific method. And yet common sense itself discloses at 
every step the fallacies of this doctrine. The moment those 
who occupied the position of saints felt that there was no 
longer any thing sacred left in them, like the Pope and our 
own Synod, they immediately called themselves not merely 
sacred, but “ most sacred.” The moment science felt that 
it had given up common sense, it called itself the science of 
reason, the only really scientific science. 


XXXI. 


The division of labor is the law pervading eveiy existing 
thing, therefore it must exist in human societies too. That 
may be so; but the question still remains,'whether the now 
existing division of labor in human society is that division 
which ought to be. And when men consider a certain divis¬ 
ion of labor to be reasonable and just, no science whatever 
can prove to men that there ought to be that which they 
consider to be unreasonable and unjust. 

The theological theory demonstrated that power is of God, 
and it very well may be so. But the question still remains, 
To whom is the power given, — to Catherine the Empress, 
or to the rebel Pugatchof? And no theological subtleties 
whatever can solve this difficulty. Moral Philosophy de¬ 
monstrated that a state is merely a form of the social 
development of the individual; but the question still 
remains, Can the state of a Nero or that of a Gengis Khan 
be considered a form of such development? And no tran¬ 
scendental words whatever can solve the difficulty. 

It is the same with scientific science also. The division of 
labor is the condition of the life of organisms and of human 


172 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


societies ; but what have we to consider in these human socie¬ 
ties to be an organic division of labor? And however much 
science studies the division of labor in the molecules of a 
tape-worm, all these observations cannot compel men to 
acknowledge a division of labor to be correct which cannot 
be admitted by their reason and conscience. However con¬ 
vincing may be the proofs of the division of labor in the 
cells of investigated organisms, a man, if he has not } 7 et 
lost his reason, will say it is wrong that some should only 
weave cloth all their life long, and that this is not a division 
of labor, but oppression of a human being. 

Herbert Spencer and others say that, as there are a whole 
population of weavers, therefore the weaver’s activity is 
the organic division of labor. Saying this, they use a simi¬ 
lar line of reasoning as do theologians. There is a power, 
and therefore it is of God, whatever it may be : there are 
weavers, therefore they exist as a result of the law of divis¬ 
ion of labor. There might be some sense in this if the 
power and the position of weavers were created by them¬ 
selves ; but we know that they are not, but that it is we who 
create them. Well, then, we ought to ascertain whether we 
have established this before-mentioned power according to 
the will of God, or of ourselves, and whether we have called 
these weavers into being by virtue of some organic law, or 
from some other cause. 

Here are men earning their living by agriculture, as it is 
proper for all men to do : one man lias arranged a smith’s 
forge, and mended his plough ; his neighbor comes to him, 
and asks him to mend his plough, too, and promises to 
give labor or money in return. A second comes with a 
similar request; others follow ; and in the society of these 
men, a form of division of labor arises: thus, one man 
becomes a smith. 

Another man has taught his children well; his neighbor 
brings him his children, and asks him to teach them, and 
thus a teacher is formed: but the smith as well as the 
teacher become, and continue to be, such, only because 
they were asked, and they remain such as long as people 
require their trades. If it happens that too many smiths 
and teachers appear, or if their labor is no longer wanted, 
they at once, according to common sense, throw aside their 
trade, and become laborers again, as it everywhere always 
happens where there is no cause for the violation of a right 
division of labor. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


173 


Men who behave in such a way are directed both by their 
reason and their conscience; and therefore we who are en¬ 
dowed with reason and conscience, all agree that such a 
division of labor is a right one. But if it were to happen 
that smiths, having the possibility of compelling other men 
to labor for them, were to continue to make horseshoes 
when there was no longer a demand for them, and teachers 
were to wish to continue to teach when there was nobod}' 
to be taught, so to every impartial man endowed with rea¬ 
son and conscience, it would become obvious that such is 
not real division of labor, but a usurpation of other men’s 
labor; because such a division could no longer be tested 
satisfactorily by that sole standard by which we may know' 
whether it is right or not, — the demand of such labor by 
other men, and a voluntary compensation offered for it by 
them. And exactly such an overplus, however, is that 
which scientific science terms a division of labor. 

Men do that which others do not require, and the}’ ask to be 
fed for this, and say it is just, because it is division of labor. 
That which forms the chief social evil of a people, not only 
with us alone, is the countless number of government func¬ 
tionaries : that which is the cause of the economical misery 
of our days is what is called in England over-production 
(that is, the production of an enormous quantity of articles, 
w'anted by nobody, and which no one knows how to get rid 
of). All this comes simply from this strange idea about 
the division of labor. 

It would be very strange to see a boot-maker w r ho con¬ 
sidered that men were bound to feed him because, forsooth, 
he continued to produce boots wanted by no one ; but what 
shall we say about those men in government, church, science, 
and art, who not only do not produce any thing tangibly 
useful for the people, and whose produce is wanted by 
nobody, and who as boldly require to be well fed and 
clothed on account of the division of labor? 

There may be some sorcerers, for whose activity there 
is a demand, and to whom men give cakes and spirits ; but 
w’e cannot even imagine the existence of such sorcerers 
who, while their sorcery is not wanted by anybody, require 
to be fed simply because they wish to practise their art. 
And this very thing is the case in our world with men in 
church and state, with men of science and art. And all this 
proceeds from that false conception of the division of labor 


174 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN? 


which is defined, Dot by reason and conscience, but by deduc¬ 
tions to which men of science so unanimously resort. 

The division of labor, indeed, has always existed ; but it 
is correct only when man decides wherein it ought to con¬ 
sist by his reason and conscience, and not by his making 
observation upon it. And the conscience and the reason of 
all men solve this question in the simplest and surest way. 
They always decide that question by recognizing the division 
of labor to be a right one only when the special activity of 
a man is so necessary to others, that they T , asking him to 
serve them, freeh r offer to feed him in compensation for what 
he will do for them. But when a man from his infancy up 
to his thirtieth year lives upon the shoulders of other men, 
promising to do, when he finishes his studies, something very 
useful, which nobody has ever asked him for, and then for 
the rest of his life lives in the same wa} 7 , promising only to 
do presently something which nobody asks him to do, this 
would not be a true division of labor, but, as it really is, 
only a violation by a strong man of the labor of others ; 
the same appropriation of other’s labor hy a strong man, 
which formerly theologians called divine destination ; phi¬ 
losophers, inevitable conditions of life ; and now scientific 
science, the organic division of labor. 

All the importance of the ruling science consists in this 
alone. This science becomes now the dispenser of diplomas 
for idleness, because she alone in her temples analyzes and 
determines what activity is a parasitic and what an organic 
one in the social organism. As if men could not, each for 
himself, much better decide it, and more quickly, too, b } 7 con¬ 
sulting his reason and conscience. 

And as formerly both for the clergy and then for states¬ 
men, there could not have been any doubt as to who were 
most necessary for other people, so now for the men of pos¬ 
itive science it seems that there cannot be any doubt about 
this, that their own activity is undoubtedly an organic one: 
they, factors of science and art, are the cells of the brain, 
the most precious cells of all the human organism. Let us 
leave them to reign, eat and drink, and be feasted, as priests 
and sophists of old have done before them, as long as they 
do not deprave men ! 

Since men exist as reasonable creatures, they have dis¬ 
criminated good from evil, making use of what has been done 
in this direction before them by others, struggled with evil, 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


175 


seeking a true and better way, and slowly but unceasingly 
have been advancing in this way. And always across it vari¬ 
ous deceits stood before them, which had in view to show 
them that this struggle was not at all necessary for them, but 
that they should submit to the tide of life. There existed 
the awful old deceits of the Church ; with dreadful struggle 
and effort men little by little got rid of them : but scarcely 
had they done so when in the place of the old deceit arose 
a new one, — a state and philosophical one. Men freed 
themselves out of these too. 

And now a new deceit, a still worse one, springs up in their 
path, — the scientific one. 

This new deceit is exactly such as the old ones were : its 
essence consists in the substitution for reason and conscience 
of something external; and this external thing is observa¬ 
tion, as in theolog}’ it was revelation. 

The snare of this science consists in this, that having shown 
to men the most bare-faced perversions of the activity of 
reason and conscience, it destroys in them confidence in both 
reason and conscience. Things which are the property of 
conscience and reason are now to be discerned by observa¬ 
tion alone: these men lose the conception of good and evil, 
and become unable to understand those expressions and 
definitions of good and evil which have been worked out by 
all the former existence of mankind. 

All that reason and conscience say to themselves, all that 
they said to the highest representatives of men since the 
world has existed, all this in their slang is conditional and 
subjective. All this must be left behind. 

It is said by reason, one cannot apprehend the truth, be¬ 
cause reason is liable to error: there is another way, unmis¬ 
takable and almost mechanical, — one ought to study facts 
upon the ground of science, that is, upon two groundless 
suppositions, positivism and evolution, which are given out 
to be most undoubted truths. And the ruling science with 
mock solemnity asserts that the solving of all the questions 
of life is onty possible through studying the facts of nature, 
and especially those of organisms. 

The credulous crowd of youth, overwhelmed by the novelty 
of this authority, not only not destroyed, but not yet even 
touched by critics, rush to the study of these facts of natural 
sciences to that only way which, according to the assertion of 
the ruling doctrine, alone can lead to the elucidation of all 


176 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN? 


questions of life. But the farther the students proceed in this 
study, the farther do they remove not only the possibility of 
solving the questions of life, but even the very thought of 
this solution ; the more they grow accustomed not so much 
to observe themselves as to believe upon their word other 
men’s observations (to believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the 
fourth dimension of matter, and so on) ; the more the form 
hides from them the contents ; the more the} T lose the con¬ 
sciousness of good and evil, and the capacity of understand¬ 
ing those expressions and definitions of good and evil which 
have been worked out by all the former career of mankind; 
the more they appropriate to themselves that special scien¬ 
tific slang of conditional expressions which have no common 
human meaning in them ; the farther and farther they get 
into the thick forest of observations which is not lighted 
up by any thing; the more the } 7 lose the capacity, not onty 
of an independent thinking, but even of understanding 
other men’s fresh human ideas which are not included in fheir 
Talmud : but chietty they pass 'their best years in losing the 
habit of life, that is, of laboring, and accustom themselves 
to consider their own position justified, and thus become 
physically good-for-nothing parasites, and mentally dislo¬ 
cate their brains, and lose all power of thought-produc¬ 
tiveness. 

And so by degrees, their capacities more and more blunted, 
they acquire self-assurance, which deprives them forever of 
the possibility of returning to a simple, laborious life, to 
any plain, clear, common, human manner of thinking. 


XXXII. 


The division of labor in human society has always existed, 
and I dare say always will exist; but the question for us is, 
not whether or not it has been and will still continue, but 
what should guide us to arrange that this division may be a 
right one. 

If we take the facts of observation for our standard, we 
must refuse to have any standard at all: every division of 
labor which we see among men, and which may seem to us 
to be a right one, we shall consider right; and this is what 
the ruling scientific science is leading us to. 

Division of labor! 


WHAT MUST WE BO THENf 177 

Some are occupied with mental and spiritual, others with 
muscular and physical, labor. 

With what an assurance do men express this ! They wish 
to think so, and that seems to them in reality a correct ex¬ 
change of services which is only the very apparent ancient 
violence. 

Thou, or rather you (because it is always many who have 
to feed one.), — you feed me, dress me, do for me all this rough 
labor, which I require of you, to which you are accustomed 
from your infancy, and I do for you that mental work to 
which I have already become accustomed. Give me bodily 
food, and I will give you in return the spiritual. 

The statement seems to be a correct one ; and it would 
really be so if only such exchange of services were free, if 
those who supply the bodily food were not obliged to supply it 
before they get the spiritual. The producer of the spiritual 
food says, In order that I may be able to give you this 
food, you must feed me, clothe me, and remove all filth from 
m}' house. 

But, as for the producer of bodily food, he must do it 
without making any claims of his own, and he has to give 
bodily food whether he receive spiritual food or not. If the 
exchange were a free one, the conditions on both sides would 
be equal. We agree that* spiritual food is as necessary to 
man as bodily. The learned man, the artist, says, Before 
we can begin to serve men by giving them spiritual food, we 
want men to provide us with bodily food. 

But why should not the producers of this latter sa}’, Before 
we begin to serve you with bodily food, we want spiritual 
food ; and until we receive it, we cannot labor? 

You sa3', T require the labor of a ploughman, a smith, a 
boot-maker, a carpenter, masons, and others, in order that I 
may prepare the spiritual food I have to offer. 

Every workman might say, too, Before I go to work, to 
prepare bodily food for you, I want the fruits of the spirit. 
In order to have strength for laboring, I require a religious 
teaching, the social order of common life, application of 
knowledge to labor, and the joys and comforts which art 
gives. I have no time to work out for myself a teaching 
concerning the meaning of life,—give it to me. 

I have no time to think out statutes of common life which 
would prevent the violation of justice,—give me this too. 
I have no time to study mechanics, natural philosophy, 


178 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


chemistry, technology ; give me books with information as to 
how I aui to improve my tools, my ways of working, my 
dwelling, the heating and lighting of it. I have no time to 
occupy myself with poetry, with plastic art, or music ; give me 
those excitements and comforts necessary for life; give 
me these productions of the arts. 

You say it is impossible for you to do your important and 
necessary business if you were to be deprived of the labor 
working-people do for you ; and I say, a workman may 
declare, It is impossible forme to do my important and neces¬ 
sary business, not less important than yours, — to plough, to 
cart away refuse, and clean your houses, — if I be deprived 
of a religious guidance corresponding to the wants of m} r 
intellect and my conscience, of a reasonable government 
which would secure my labor, of information for easing my 
labor, and the enjoyment of art to ennoble it. All you have 
offered me in the shape of spiritual food, is not only of no 
use to me whatever, but I cannot even understand to -whom 
it could be of any use. And until I receive this nourish¬ 
ment, proper for me as for every man, I cannot produce 
bodily food to feed you with. 

What if the working-people should speak thus ? And if they 
said so, it would be no jest, but the simplest justice. If a 
workingman said this, he would be far more in the right than 
a man of intellectual labor; because the labor produced by 
the workingman is more urgent and more necessary than 
that done by the producer of intellectual work, and because 
a man of intellect is hindered by nothing from giving that 
spiritual food which he promisee! to give, but the working- 
man is hindered in giving the bodily food by the fact that he 
himself is short of it. 

What, then, should we, men of intellectual labor, answer, if 
such simple and lawful claims were made upon us? How 
should w r e satisfy these claims ? Should we satisfy the religious 
wants of the people by the catechism of Philaret, by sacred 
histories of Sokolof, by the literature sent out by various 
monasteries and St. Isaak’s cathedral? And should we satisfy 
their demand for order by the Code of Laws, and cassation 
verdicts of different departments, or by statutes of committees 
and commissions ? And should we satisfy their want of knowl¬ 
edge by giving them spectrum analysis, a survey of the 
Milky Way, speculative geometry, microscopic investigations, 
controversies concerning spiritualism and mediumism, the 


WIIAT MUST WE BO THEN f 


179 


activity of academies of science? How should we satisfy 
their artistic wants? By Pushkin, Dosto}'evsky, Turgenief, 
L. Tolstoi', by pictures of French salons , and of those of 
our artists who represent naked women, satin, velvet, and 
landscapes, and pictures of domestic life, by the music of 
Wagner, and that of our own musicians? 

All this is of no use, and cannot be of any use, because we, 
with our right to utilize the labor of the people, and absence 
of all duties in our preparation of their spiritual food, have 
quite lost from sight the single destination our activity should 
have. 

We do not even know what is required by the working¬ 
man ; we have even forgotten his mode of life, his views of 
things, his language ; we have even lost sight of the very 
working-people themselves, and we study them like some 
ethnographical rarity or newl} r discovered continent. Now, 
we, demanding for ourselves bodily food, have taken upon 
ourselves to provide the spiritual; but in consequence of the 
imaginary division of labor, according to which we may not 
only first take our dinner, and afterwards do our work, but 
may during many generations dine luxuriously, and do no 
work, — in the way of compensation for our food we have 
prepared something which is of use, as it seems to us, for 
ourselves and for science and art, but of no use whatever for 
those very people whose labor we consume under the pre¬ 
text of providing them in return with intellectual food, and 
not only of no use, but quite unintelligible and distasteful to 
them. 

In our blindness we have to such a degree left out of sight 
the duty which we took upon us, that we have even forgotten 
for what our labor is being done ; and the very people whom 
we undertook to serve, we have made an object of our 
scientific and artistic activities. We study them and repre¬ 
sent them for our own pleasure and amusement: we have 
quite forgotten that it is our duty, not to study and depict, 
but to serve them. 

We have to such a degree left out of sight the duty which 
we assumed, that we have not even noticed that other people 
do what we undertook in the departments of science and art, 
and that our place turns out to be occupied. 

It appears that, while we have been in controversy, now 
about the immaculate conception, and now about spontaneous 
generation of organisms ; now about spiritualism, and now 


180 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


about the forms of atoms ; now about pangenesis, now about 
protoplasms, and so on, — the rest of the world none the less 
required intellectual food, and the abortive outcasts of science 
and art began to provide for the people this spiritual food bj’ 
order of various speculators who had in view exclusively 
their own profit and gain. 

Now, for some forty years in Europe, and ten years in 
Russia, millions of books and pictures and songs have been 
circulating; shows have been opened: and the people look 
and sing, and receive intellectual food, though not from those 
who promised to provide it for them ; and we, who justify 
our idleness by the need for that intellectual food which we 
pretend to provide for the people, are sitting still, and taking 
no notice. 

But we cannot do so, because our final justification has 
vanished from under our feet. We have taken upon our¬ 
selves a peculiar department: we have a peculiar functional 
activity of our own. We are the brain of the people. They 
feed us, and we have undertaken to teach them. Only for the 
sake of this have we freed ourselves from labor. What, 
then, have we been teaching them? They have waited years, 
tens of years, hundreds of years. And we are still convers¬ 
ing among ourselves, and teaching each other, and amusing 
ourselves, and have quite forgotten them ; we have so totally 
forgotten them, that others have taken upon themselves to 
teach and amuse them, and we have not even become aware 
of this in our flippant talk about division of labor: and it 
is very obvious that all our talk about the utility we offer to 
the people was only a shameful excuse. 


XXXIII. 

There was a time when the Church guided the intellectual 
life of the men of our world. The Church promised men 
happiness, and, in compensation for this, she freed herself 
from taking part in mankind’s common struggle for life. 

And, as soon as she did so, she went astray from her call¬ 
ing, and men turned away from her. It was not the errors 
of the Church which caused her ruin, but the fact that her 
ministers had violated the law of labor with the help of the 
secular power in the time of Constantine, and their claim to 
idleness and luxury gave birth to her errors. 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


181 


As soon as she obtained this right, she began to care for 
herself, and not for man, whom she had taken upon herself 
to serve. The ministers of the Church gave themselves up to 
idleness and depravity. 

The State took upon itself to guide men’s lives. The 
State promised men justice, peace, security, order, satisfac¬ 
tion for common intellectual and material wants, and in 
compensation men who served the State freed themselves 
from taking part in the struggle for life. And the Stale’s 
servants, as soon as they were enabled to utilize other men’s 
labor, have acted in the same way as the ministers of the 
Church. 

They had not in view the people ; but the state servants, 
from kings down to the lowest functionaries, in Rome, as 
well as in France, England, Russia, and America, gave them¬ 
selves over to idleness and depravity. 

And men lost their faith in the state, and now anarchy is 
seriously advocated as an ideal. 

The state lost its prestige among men, only because its 
ministers claimed the right of utilizing for themselves the 
people’s labor. 

Science and art have done the same with the assistance of 
the state power which they took upon themselves to sustain. 
They have also claimed and obtained for themselves the 
right of idleness, and of utilizing other men’s labor, and 
have also been false to their calling. And their errors also 
proceeded only from the fact that their ministers, pointing to 
a falsely conceived principle of the division of labor, claimed 
for themselves the right to utilize the work of the people, and 
so lost the meaning of their calling, making the aim of their 
activity, not the utility of the people, but a mysterious activity 
of science and art; and also, like their forerunners, they have 
given themselves over to idleness and depravity, though not 
so much to a fleshly, as to an intellectual, corruption. 

It is said, science and art have done much for mankind. 

This is quite true. 

Science and art also have done much for mankind, not be¬ 
cause, but in spite of, the fact that men of science and art, 
under the pretext of division of labor, live upon the shoulders 
of the working-people. 

The Roman Republic was powerful, not because its citizens 
were able to lead a life of depravity, but because it could 
number amongst them men who were virtuous. 


182 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


The same is the case with science and art. 

Science and art have effected much for mankind, not be¬ 
cause their ministers had sometimes formerly, and have 
always at present, the possibility of freeing themselves from 
laboring, but because men of genius, not utilizing these 
rights, have forwarded the progress of mankind. 

The class of learned men and artists w r ho claim, on account 
of a false division of labor, the right of utilizing other men’s 
labor, cannot contribute to the progress of true science and 
true art, because a lie can never produce a truth. 

We are so accustomed to our pampered or debilitated rep¬ 
resentatives of intellectual labor, that it would seem very 
strange if a learned man or an artist were to plough or cart 
manure. We think that, were he to do so, all would go to 
ruin ; that all his wisdom would be shaken out of him, and 
the great artistic images he carries in his breast would be 
soiled by the manure: but we are so accustomed to our pres¬ 
ent conditions that we do not wonder at our ministers of 
science, that is, ministers and teachers of truth, compelling 
other people to do for them that which they could very well 
do themselves, passing half their time eating, smoking, chat¬ 
tering in “liberal” gossip, reading newspapers, novels, 
visiting theatres; we are not surprised to see our philosopher 
in an inn, in a theatre, at a ball; we do not wonder when we 
learn that those artists who delight and ennoble our souls, 
pass their lives in drunkenness, in playing cards, in compan}’ 
with loose women, or do things still worse. 

Science and art are fine things: but just because the}’ are 
fine things, men ought not to spoil them by associating them 
with depravity ; by freeing themselves from man’s dut}’ to 
serve by labor his own life and the lives of other men. 

Science and art have forwarded the progress of mankind. 
Yes ; but this was not done by the fact that men of science 
and art, under the pretext of a division of labor, taught men 
by word, and chiefly by deed, to utilize by violence the 
misery and sufferings of the people, in order to free them¬ 
selves from the very first and unquestionable human duty of 
laboring with their hands in the common struggle of mankind 
with nature. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


183 


XXXIV. 


“ But it is,” you say, “ this very division of labor, the 
freeing men of science and of art from the necessity of earn¬ 
ing their bread, that has rendered possible that extraordinary 
success in science which we see in our days. 

“ If everybody were to plough, these enormous results 
would not be attained; there would not be those astonishing 
successes which have so enlarged man’s power over nature ; 
there would not be those discoveries in astronomy which 
so strike the minds of men and promote navigation ; there 
would be no steamers, railways, wonderful bridges, tunnels, 
steam-engines, and telegraphs, photographs, telephones, 
sewing-machines, phonographs, electricity, telescopes, spec¬ 
troscopes, microscopes, chloroform, Lister bandages, carbolic 
acid.” 

I will not attempt to enumerate all the things of which our 
century is so proud. : This enumeration, and the ecstasy of 
contemplation of ourselves and of our great deeds, you may 
find in almost every newspaper and popular book. 

These raptures of self-contemplation are so often repeated, 
and we are so seldom tired of praising ourselves, that we 
really come to believe, with Jules Verne, that science and art 
have never made such progress as in our time. And all this 
is rendered possible only by division of labor: how can we, 
then, avoid countenancing it? 

Let us suppose that the progress of our century is indeed 
striking, astonishing, extraordinary; let us suppose that 
we, too, are particularly lucky in living at such an extraor¬ 
dinary time: but let us try to ascertain the value of these 
successes, not by our own self-contentment, but by the very 
principle of the division of labor; that is, by that intellect¬ 
ual labor of men of science for the advantage of the people 
which has to compensate for the freeing men of science and. 
art from labor. 

All this progress is very striking indeed; but owing to 
some unlucky chance, recognized, too, by men of science, 
this progress has not as yet ameliorated, but it has rather 
deteriorated, the condition of workingmen. 

Though a workingman, instead of walking, can use the 
railway, it is this very railway which has caused his forest 
to be burned, and has carried away his bread from under 


184 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


his very nose, and put him into a condition which is next 
door to slavery to the railway proprietor. 

If, thanks to the engines and steam-machines, a working¬ 
man can buy cheap and poor calico, it will be these ver} r 
engines and machines which have deprived him of his 
wages, and brought him to a state of entire slavery to the 
manufacturer. 

If there are telegraphs, which he is not forbidden to use, 
but which he does not use because he cannot afford it, then 
each of his productions, the value of which fluctuates, is 
bought up from under his very eyes by capitalists at low 
prices, thanks to the telegraph, before the workingman 
even becomes aware that the article is in demand. 

Though there are telephones and telescopes, novels, operas, 
picture-galleries, and so on, the life of the workingman is 
not at all improved by any of them, because all, owing to 
the same unlucky chance, are beyond his reach. So that, 
after all, these wonderful discoveries and productions of 
art, if they have not made the life of working-people worse, 
have by no means improved it: on this the men of science 
are agreed. 

So that, if to the question as to the reality of the suc¬ 
cesses attained by the sciences and arts, we apply, not our 
rapture of self-contemplation, but the very standard on 
which the ground of the division of labor is defended,— 
utility to the working-world, — we shall see that we have not 
yet an3 T sound reason for the self-contentment to which we 
consign ourselves so willingh*. 

A peasant uses the railway ; a peasant’s wife buys calico ; 
in the cottage a lamp, and not a pine-knot, burns; and the 
peasant lights his pipe with a match, — this is comfortable ; 
but what right have I from this to say that railways and 
factories have done good to the people? 

If a peasant uses the railway, and buys a lamp, calico, and 
matches, he does it only because we cannot forbid his doing 
so: we all know very well that railways and factories have 
never been built for the use of the people ; why, then, should 
the casual comfort a workingman obtains by chance, be 
brought forward as a proof of the usefulness of these insti¬ 
tutions to the people? 

We all know very well that if those engineers and capi¬ 
talists who build a railway or a factory have been thinking 
about working-people, they have been thinking only how 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


185 


to make the best possible use of them. And we see they 
have fully succeeded in doing so as well in Russia as in 
Europe and America. 

In every hurtful thing, there is something useful. After 
a house has been burned down, we may sit and warm our¬ 
selves, and light our pipes with one of the fire-brands ; but 
should we therefore say that a conflagration is beneficial? 

Whatever we do, let us not deceive ourselves. We all 
know very well the motives for building railways, and for 
producing kerosene and matches. An engineer builds a 
railway for the government, to facilitate wars, or for the 
capitalists for financial purposes. He makes machines for 
manufacturers for his own advantage, and for the profit of 
capitalists. All that he makes or excogitates he does for 
the purpose of the government, the capitalists, and other 
rich people. His most skilful inventions are either directly 
harmful to the people, as guns, torpedoes, solitary prisons, 
and so on ; or they are not only useless, but quite inacces¬ 
sible to them, as electric light, telephones, and the innumer¬ 
able improvements of comfort; or lastly, they deprave the 
people, and rob them of their last kopek, that is, their last 
labor, for spirits, wine, beer, opium, tobacco, calicoes, and 
all sorts of trifles. 

But if it happens sometimes that the inventions of men 
of science, and the works of engineers, are of any use to the 
people, as, for instance, railways, calicoes, steel, scythes, it 
only proves that, in this world of ours, all things are mutu¬ 
ally connected together, and that, out of every hurtful 
activity, there may arise an accidental good for those to 
whom this activity was hurtful. 

Men of science and of art can say that their activity is 
useful for the people, only if they have aimed in their ac¬ 
tivity at serving the people, as they do now to serve govern¬ 
ments and capitalists. 

We could have said that, only if men of science and art 
made the wants of the people their object; but such is not 
the case. 

All learned men are occupied with their sacred business, 
which leads to the investigation of protoplasms, the spec¬ 
trum analysis of stars, and so on : but concerning investiga¬ 
tions as to how to set an axe, or with what kind it is more 
advantageous to hew ; which saw is the most handy; with 
what flour bread shall be made, how it may best be 


186 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


kneaded, how to set it to rise; how to heat and to build 
stoves; what food, drink, crockery-ware, it is best to use ; 
what mushrooms may be eaten, and how they may be pre¬ 
pared more conveniently, — science has never troubled 
itself. 

And yet all this is the business of science. 

I know that, according to its own definition, science must 
be useless; but this is only an excuse, and a very impudent 
one. 

The business of science is to serve people. We have 
invented telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, but what 
improvements have we made in the life of the people? We 
have catalogued two millions of insects ! but have we do¬ 
mesticated a single animal since biblical times, when all 
our animals had long been domesticated, and still the elk 
and the deer, and the partridge and the grouse and the 
wood-hen, are wild? 

Botanists have discovered the cells, and in the cells proto¬ 
plasms, and in protoplasms something else, and in this some¬ 
thing else again. 

These occupations will evidently never end, and therefore 
learned men have no time to do any thing useful. And hence 
from the times of the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews, when 
wheat and lentils were already cultivated, down to the pres¬ 
ent time, not a single plant has been added for the nourish¬ 
ment of the people except potatoes, and these have not been 
discovered by science. We have invented torpedoes, house- 
drains ; but the spinning-wheel, weaving-looms, ploughs and 
axe-handles, flails and rakes, buckets and well-sweeps, are 
still the same as in the time of Rurik. 

And if some things have been improved, it is not the 
learned who have done it. 

The same is the case with art. We have praised up many 
great writers, have carefully sifted these writers, and have 
written mountains of critiques and criticisms upon critics; 
we have collected pictures in galleries, and we have thor¬ 
oughly studied all the schools of art; and we have such sym¬ 
phonies and operas that we ourselves are tired of listening 
to; but what have we added to the folk-lore, legends, tales, 
songs? what pictures, what music, have we created for the 
people? 

Books and pictures are published, and harmoniums are 
made for the people, but we do not care for either, 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


187 


That which is most striking and obvious, is the false ten¬ 
dency of our science and art, which manifests itself in those 
departments which, according to their own propositions, would 
seem to be useful to people, and which, owing to this ten¬ 
dency, appear rather pernicious than useful. An engineer, 
a surgeon, a teacher, an artist, an author, seem by their very 
professions to be obliged to serve the people, but what do 
we see? 

With the present tendency, they can bring to the people 
nothing but harm. An engineer and a mechanic must work 
with capital: without capital they are good for nothing. 

All their informations are such, that, in order to make use 
of them, they need capital and the employment of working- 
people on a large scale, to sa}* nothing of the fact that they 
themselves are accustomed to spend from fifteen hundred 
to two thousand rubles a year, and therefore they cannot go to 
a village, since no one there can give them an}* such remu¬ 
neration : they, from their very occupations, are not fit for 
the service of the people. 

They understand how to calculate by means of the highest 
mathematics the arch of a bridge, how to calculate power 
and the transfer of power in an engine, and so on': but they 
will be at a loss to meet the plain requirements of popular 
labor; they do not know how to improve the plough or the 
cart; how to make a brook passable, taking into considera¬ 
tion the conditions of a workingman’s life. 

They know and understand nothing of all this, less even 
than does the poorest peasant. Give them workshops, 
plenty of people, order engines from abroad, then they will 
arrange these matters. But to find out how to ease the labor 
of millions of people in their present condition, they do not 
know, and cannot do it; and accordingly, by their knowledge 
and habits and wants, they are not at all fit for this business. 
A surgeon is in a still worse condition. His imaginary sci¬ 
ence is such that he understands how to cure those only who 
have nothing to do, and who may utilize other men’s labor. 
He requires a countless number of expensive accessories, in¬ 
struments, medicines, sanitary dwellings, food, and drains, 
in order that he may act scientifically: besides his fee, he 
demands such expenses, that, in order to cure one patient, 
he must kill with starvation hundreds of those who bear this 
expense. 

He has studied under eminent persons in the capital cities, 


188 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


who attend only to such patients whom they may take into 
hospitals, or who can afford to buy all the necessary medi¬ 
cines and machines, and even go at once from north to the 
south, to these or those mineral waters, as the case may be. 

Their-science is such that every country surgeon complains 
that there is no possibility of attending to the working-peo¬ 
ple, who are so poor that they cannot afford sanitary accom¬ 
modations, and that there are no hospitals, and that he 
cannot attend to the business alone, that he requires help 
and assistant-surgeons. What does this really mean? 

It means this, — that the want of the necessaries of life is 
the chief cause of people’s misfortunes, and as well the 
source of diseases as also of their spreading and incurability. 
And now science, under the banners of the division of labor, 
calls its champions to help the people. Science has settled 
satisfactorily about rich classes, and seeks how to cure those 
who can get every thing necessary for the purpose, and it 
sends persons to cure in the same way those who have noth¬ 
ing to spare. But there are no means; and therefore they 
are to- be raised from the people, who become ill, and catch 
diseases, and cannot be cured for want of means. 

The advocates of the healing art for the people say, that, 
up to the present time, this business has not been sufficiently 
developed. 

Evidently it is not yet developed, because if, which God 
forbid ! it were developed among our people, and, instead of 
two doctors and mid wives and two assistant-surgeons in the 
district, there should be twenty sent, as they want, then there 
would soon be no one left to attend to. The scientific co¬ 
operation for the people must be quite a different one. And 
such co-operation which ought to be, has not yet begun. 

It will begin when a man of science, an engineer, or a 
surgeon, will cease to consider as lawful that division of 
labor, or rather that taking away other men’s labor, which now 
exists, and when he no longer considers that he has the right 
to take, I do not say hundreds of thousands, but even a 
moderate sum of one thousand or five hundred rubles as 
a compensation for his services ; but when such a man comes 
to live among laboring-people in the same condition and in 
the same way as they, then he will apply his information in 
mechanics, technics, hygiene, to the curing of working-people. 

But now scientific men, who are fed at the expense of the 
working man, have quite forgotten the conditions of the life 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


189 


of these men : they ignore (as they say) these conditions, and 
are quite seriously offended that their imaginary knowledge 
does not find application among the people. 

The departments as well of the healing art as the me¬ 
chanical have not yet been touched : the questions how best 
to divide the time of labor, how and upon what it is best to 
feed, how best to dress, how to counteract dampness and 
cold, how best to wash, to suckle, and swaddle children, and so 
on, and all these applied to those conditions in which the 
working-people are, — all these questions have not yet been 
put. 

The same applies to the activity of scientific teachers, — 
pedagogues. Science has arranged this business, too, in such 
a way that teaching according to science is possible only for 
those who are rich ; and the teachers, like the engineers and 
surgeons, are involuntarily drawn towards money, and among 
us in Russia especially towards the government. 

And this cannot be otherwise, because a school properly 
arranged (and the general rule is, that the more scientifically 
a school is arranged, the more expensive it is), with convert¬ 
ible benches, globes, maps, libraries, and method manuals for 
teachers and pupils, is just such a school for whose mainten¬ 
ance it is necessary to double the taxes of the people. So 
science wants to have it. The children are necessary for 
work, and the more so with the poorer people. The advocates 
of science say, Pedagogy is even now of use for the-people; 
but let it be developed, and instead of twenty schools in a 
district, let there be a hundred, all of them scientifically ar¬ 
ranged, and the people will support these schools. But then 
they will be still poorer, and will want the labor of their 
children still more urgently. 

What is then to be done ? 

To this they reply, The government will establish schools, 
and will make education obligatory as it is in the rest of 
Europe. But the money will still have to be raised from the 
people, and labor will be still harder for them, and they will 
have less time to spare from their labor, and there will be 
then no obligatory education at all. 

There is, again, only one escape, — for a teacher to live in the 
conditions of a workingman, and to teach for that compen¬ 
sation which will be freely offered him. Such is the false 
tendency of science which deprives it of the possibility to 
fulfil its duty in serving the people. But this false tendency 


190 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN f 


of our educated class is still more obvious in art-activity, 
which, for the sake of its very meaning, ought to be accessible 
to the people. 

Science may point to its stupid excuse that science is acting 
for science, and that, when it will be fully developed, it will 
become accessible to the people ; but art, if it is art indeed, 
ought to be accessible to all, especially to those for the sake 
of whom it is created. And our art strikingly denounces its 
factors in that they do not wish, and do not understand, and 
are not able to be of use to the people. A painter, in order 
to produce his great works, must have a large studio, in which 
at least forty joiners or boot-makers might work, who are 
now freezing or suffocating in wretched lodgings : but this is 
not all: he requires models, costumes, journeys from place 
to place. The Academy of Art has spent millions of rubles 
collected from the people for the encouragement of art; and 
the productions of this art are hung in palaces, and are 
neither intelligible to the people, nor wanted by them. 

Musicians, in order to express their great ideas, must 
gather about two hundred men with white neckties or in 
costumes, and spend hundreds of thousands of rubles to arrange 
operas. But this art-production would never appear to the 
people (even if they could afford to use it) as any thing but per¬ 
plexing or dull. The authors, writers, seem not to want any 
particular accommodations, studios, models, orchestras, and 
actors ;*but here also it turns out that an author, a writer, to 
say nothing of all the comforts of his dwelling and all the 
comforts of his life, in order to prepare his great works, wants 
travelling, palaces, cabinets, enjoyments of art, theatres, 
concerts, mineral waters, and so on. If he himself has not 
saved up enough money for this purpose, he is given a pen¬ 
sion in order that he may compose better. And, again, these 
writings, which we value so highly, remain for the people, 
rubbish, and are not at all necessary to them. 

What if, according to the wish of men of science and art, 
such producers of mental food should multiply, so that, in 
every village, it would be necessary to build a studio, provide 
an orchestra, and keep an author in the conditions which men 
of art Consider indispensable to them ? I dare say working- 
people would make a vow never to look at a picture, or listen 
to a symphon} T , or read poetry and novels, in order only not to 
be compelled to feed all these good-for-nothing parasites. 

And why should not men of art serve the people? In 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


191 


every cottage, there are holy images and pictures ; each peas¬ 
ant, each woman of the people, sings ; many have instruments 
of music ; and all can relate stories, repeat poetry ; and many 
of them read. How came it to pass that these two things 
were separated which were as much made for one another as 
a key for a lock, and how are they so separated that we can¬ 
not imagine how to re-unite them? 

Tell a painter to paint without a studio, models, costumes, 
and to draw penny pictures, he will say that this would be a 
denying of art as he understands it. Tell a musician to play 
on a harmonium, and to teach country-women to sing songs ; 
tell a poet to throw aside writing poems and novels and 
satires, and to compose song-books for the people, and 
stories and tales which might be intelligible to ignorant 
persons, —they will say you are cracked. 

But is it not being worse than cracked when men, who 
have freed themselves from labor because they promised to 
provide mental food for those who have brought them up, 
and are feeding and clothing them, afterwards have so for¬ 
gotten their promise that they have ceased to understand 
how to make food fit for the people ? Yet this very forsaking 
of their promises the } 7 consider dignifies them. Such is the 
case everywhere, they say. Everywhere the case is very 
unreasonable, then ; and it will be so while men, under the 
pretext of division of labor, promise to provide mental food 
for the people, but only swallow up the labor of the peo¬ 
ple. Men will serve the people with science and art, only 
when, living among and in the same way as do the people, 
putting forth no claims whatever, they offer to the people 
their scientific and artistic services, leaving it to the free will 
of the people to accept or refuse them. 


XXXV. 

To say that the activities of the arts and sciences have co¬ 
operated in forwarding the progress of mankind, and by 
these activities to mean that which is now called by this 
name, is the same as to say that an awkward moving of the 
oars, hindering the progress of a boat going down the 
stream, is forwarding the progress of the boat; but it only 
hinders it. The so-called division of labor — that is, the 
violation of other men’s labor which has become in our 


192 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


time a condition of the activity of men of art and science — 
has been, and still remains, the chief cause of the slowness 
of the progress of mankind. 

The proof of it we have in the acknowledgment of all 
men* of science and art that the acquisitions of art and 
science are not accessible to the working-classes because of a 
wrong distribution of wealth. And the incorrectness of this 
distribution does not diminish in proportion to the progress 
of art and science, but rather increases. And it is not as¬ 
tonishing that such is the case ; because the incorrect distri¬ 
bution of wealth proceeds solely from the theoiy of the 
division of labor, preached by men of art and science for 
selfish purposes. 

Science, defending the division of labor as an unchange¬ 
able law, sees that the distribution of wealth based upon the 
division of labor is incorrect and pernicious, and asserts 
that its activity, which recognizes the division of labor, 
will set all right again, and lead men to happiness. 

It appears, then, that some men utilize the labor of 
others; but if they will only continue to do this for a long 
time, and on a still larger scale, then this incorrect distribu¬ 
tion of wealth, that is, utilizing of other men’s labor, will 
vanish. 

Men are standing by an ever-increasing spring of water, 
and are busy turning it aside from thirsty men, and then 
they assert that it is they who produce this water, and that 
soon there will be so much of it that everybody will have 
enough and to spare. And this water, which has been run¬ 
ning unceasingly, and nourishing all mankind, is not only 
not the result of the activity of those men, who, standing 
at the source of it, turn it aside, but this water runs and 
spreads itself in spite of the endeavors of those men to stop 
it from doing so. 

There has always existed a true church, — in other words, 
men united by the highest truth accessible to them at a cer¬ 
tain epoch, — but it has never been that church which gave 
herself out for such ; and there have always been real art and 
science, but it was not that which calls itself now by these 
names. 

Men who consider themselves to be the representatives of 
art and science in a given period of time, always imagine that 
they have been doing, and will continue to do, wonderful 
things, and that beyond them there has never been any art 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 193 

or science. Thus it seemed to the sophists, to the scho¬ 
liasts, alchemists, cabalists, Talmudists, and to our own 
scientific science and to our artistic art. 


XXX YI. 

“But science! art! You repudiate science, art; that is, 
you repudiate that by which mankind live.” 

I am always hearing this : people choose this way to put 
aside my arguments altogether without analyzing them. He 
repudiates science and art; he wishes to turn men back 
again to the savage state ; why, then, should we listen to him, 
or argue with him? 

But it is unjust. I not only do not repudiate science—* 
human reasonable activity — and art, — the expression of 
this reasonable activity, —but it is only in the name of this 
reasonable activity and its expression that I say what I do, 
in order that mankind may avoid the savage state towards 
w'hich the}' are rapidly moving, owing to the false teaching 
of our time. 

Science and art are as necessary to men as food, drink, 
and clothes, — even still more necessary than these ; but they 
become such, not because we decide that what we call science 
and art are necessary, but because they indeed are necessary 
to men. Now, if I should prepare hay for the bodily food of 
men, m3' idea that hay is the food for men would not make 
it to be so. I cannot say, Why do you not eat hay when it 
is your necessary food? Food is, indeed, necessary, but 
perhaps what I offer is not food at all. 

This very thing has happened with our science and art. 
And to us it seems that when we add to a Greek word the 
termination logy , and call this science, it will be science in¬ 
deed ; and if we call an indecency, like the dancing of naked 
women, by the Greek word “ choreograph} 7 ,” and term it art, 
it w’ill be art indeed. 

But however much we may say this, the business w'hich we 
are about, in counting up the insects, and chemically analyz¬ 
ing the contents of the Milky Way, in painting water-nymphs 
and historical pictures, in writing novels, and in composing 
symphonies, this, our business, will not become science or 
art until it is willingly accepted by those for whom it is being 
done. 


194 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN f 


And till now it has not been accepted. If only some men 
were allowed to prepare food, and all others were either for¬ 
bidden to do it, or be rendered incapable of producing it, I 
dare say that the quality of the food would deteriorate. If 
these men who have the exclusive privilege of producing 
food were Russian peasants, then there would be no other 
food than black bread, kvas, potatoes, and flour, which they 
are fond of, and which is agreeable to them. The same 
would be the case with that highest human activity in art and 
science if their exclusive privilege were appropriated by one 
caste, with this difference only, that in bodily food there can¬ 
not be too great digressions from the natural; bread as well 
as onions, though unsavory food, is still eatable: but in 
mental food, there may be great digressions ; and some men 
may for a very loug time feed upon an unnecessary, or even 
hurtful and poisonous, mental food; they themselves may 
slowly kill themselves with opium or with spirits, and this 
sort of food they may offer to the masses of the people. 

This very thing has happened with us. And it has hap¬ 
pened because men of art and science are in privileged con¬ 
ditions ; because art and science in our world are not that 
mental activity of all mankind, without any exception, who 
separate their best powers for the service of art and science: 
but it is the activity of a small company of men having the 
monopoly of these occupations, and calling themselves men 
of art and science ; and therefore the}’ have perverted the 
very conceptions of art and science, and lost the sense 
of their own calling, and are merely occupied in amusing, 
and saving from burdensome dulness, a small company of 
parasites. 

Since men have existed, they have alwaj's had science in 
the plainest and largest sense of the word. Science, as the 
sum of all human information, has always been in existence ; 
and without it life is not conceivable, and there is no neces¬ 
sity whatever either to attack or to defend it. 

But the fact is this, that the region of this knowledge is 
so various, so much information of all kinds enters into it, 
from the information how to obtain iron up to the knowledge 
about the movements of the celestial bodies, that man would 
be lost among all this varied information if he had no clew 
which could help him to decide which of all these kinds of 
information is more, and which less, important. 

And, therefore, the highest wisdom of men has always 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


195 


consisted in finding out the clew according to which must be 
arranged the information of men, and by which decided what 
kinds of information are more, and what are less, important. 
And this which has directed all other knowledge, men have 
always called science in the strictest sense of the word. And 
such science has alwaj’s been, up to the present time, in hu¬ 
man societies which have left the savage state behind them. 
Since mankind has existed, in every nation teachers have 
appeared to form science in this strict sense, — the science 
about what it is most necessary for men to know. This sci¬ 
ence has always had for its object the inquiry as to what 
was the destiny, and therefore the true welfare, of each man 
and of all men. This science has served as a clew in deter¬ 
mining the importance and the expression of all other sci¬ 
ences. The kinds of information and the art which co-operated 
with the science of man’s destiny and welfare were con¬ 
sidered highest in public opinion. 

Such was the science of Confucius, Buddha, Moses, 
Socrates, Christ, Mohammed, —science such as it has been 
understood by all men except by our own circle of so-called 
educated people. 

Such a science has not only alwa} T s occupied the first place, 
but it is the one science which has determined the importance 
of other sciences. And this, not at all because so-called 
learned men of our time imagine that it is only deceitful 
priests and teachers of this science who have given it such 
an importance, but because, indeed, as every one can learn 
by his own inward experience, without the science of man’s 
destiny and welfare, there cannot be any determining of 
other values, or any choice of art and science for man. And, 
therefore, there cannot be any study of science, for there 
are innumerable quantities of subjects to which science may 
be applied. I italicize the word innumerable, as I use it in 
its exact value. 

Without knowledge as to what constitutes the calling and 
welfare of all men, all other arts and sciences become, as is 
realty the case at present with us, only an idle and pernicious 
amusement. Mankind have been living long, and they have 
never been living without a science relative to the calling and 
welfare of men : it is true that the science of the welfare of 
men to a superficial observation appears to be different with 
Buddhists, Brahmins, Hebrews, Christians, w r ith the followers 
of Confucius and those of Laotse, though one need only 


196 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


reflect on these teachings in order to see their essential unity ; 
where men have left the savage state behind them, we find 
this science ; and now of a sudden it turns out that modern 
men have decided that this very science which has been till 
now the guide of all human information, is that which is in 
the way of every thing. 

Men build houses: one architect makes one estimate, an¬ 
other makes a second, and so on. The estimates are a little 
different, but they are separately correct; and every one sees 
that, if each estimate is fulfilled, the house will be erected. 
Such architects are Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Christ. And 
now some men come and assure us that the chief thing to 
come by is the absence of any estimate, and that men ought 
to build anyhow according to eyesight. And this “ any¬ 
how ” these men call the most exact science, as the Pope 
terms himself the “ most holy.” 

Men deny every science, the most essential science of 
man’s calling and welfare ; and this denial of science they 
call science. Since men have existed, great intellects have 
alwa} s appeared, which, in the struggle with the demands of 
their reason and conscience, have put to themselves questions 
concerning the calling and welfare, not only of themselves 
individually, but of every man. What does that Power, 
which created me, require from me and from each man? 
And what am I to do in order to satisfy the craving in¬ 
grafted in me for a personal and common welfare ? 

They have asked themselves, I am a whole and a part of 
something unfathomable, infinite: what are to be my rela¬ 
tions to other parts similar to me, — to men and to the whole ? 

And from the voice of conscience and from reason, and 
from considerations on what men have said who lived before, 
and from contemporaries who have asked themselves the 
same questions, these great teachers have deduced teachings, 
— plain, clear, intelligible to all men, and always such as 
could be put into practice. 

The world is full of such men. All living men put to 
themselves the question, How am I to reconcile my own 
demands for personal life with conscience and reason, which 
demand the common good of all men ? And out of this com¬ 
mon travail are evolved slowly, but unceasingly, new forms 
of life, satisfying more and more the demands of reason and 
conscience.' 

And of a sudden a new caste of men appears, who say, 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


197 


All these are nonsense, and are to be left behind. This is 
the deductive way of thinking (though wherein lies the differ¬ 
ence between the inductive and the deductive way of think¬ 
ing, nobody ever has been able to understand), and this is 
also the method of the theological and metaphysical periods. 

All that men have understood by inward experience, and 
have related to each other concerning the consciousness of 
the law of their own life (functional activity, in their cant 
phrase) ; all that from the beginning of the world has been 
done in this direction by the greatest intellects of mankind, — 
all these are trifles, having no weight whatever. 

According to this new teaching, Yon are a cell of an 
organism, and the problem of your reasonable activity con¬ 
sists in trying to ascertain your functional activit} 7 . In 
order to ascertain this, you must make observations outside 
yourself. 

The fact that you are a cell which thinks, suffers, speaks, 
and understands, and that for that very reason you can 
inquire of another similar speaking, suffering cell whether he 
or she suffers and rejoices in the same way as yourself, and 
that thus you may verify your own experience ; and the fact 
that you may make use of what the speaking cells, who lived 
and suffered before yon wrote on the subject; and your 
knowledge that millions of cells, agreeing with what the past 
cells have written, confirm your own experience, that you 
yourself are a living cell, who always, by a direct inward 
experience, apprehend the correctness or incorrectness of 
your own functional activity, — all this means nothing, we 
are told: it is all a false and evil method. 

The true scientific method is this: If you wish to learn 
in what consists your functional activity, what is 3 T our des¬ 
tiny and welfare, and what the destin3 T of mankind, and of 
the whole world, then first 3 7 ou must cease to listen to the 
voice and demands of 3 r our conscience and of your reason, 
which manifest themselves inwardly to 3 T ou and to 3 T our fel¬ 
low-men ; you must leave off believing all the great teachers 
of humanity have said about their own conscience and reason, 
and you must consider all this to be nonsense, and begin 
at the beginning. 

And in order to begin from the beginning, you have to 
observe through a microscope the movements of amoebae 
and the cells of tape-worms; or, still easier, you must be¬ 
lieve every thing that people with the diploma of infallibility 


198 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


may tell you about them. And observing the movements of 
these amoebae and cells, or reading what others have seen, 
you must ascribe to these cells your own human feelings and 
calculations as to what they desire, what are their tendencies, 
their reflections and calculations, their habits ; and from 
these observations (in which each word contains some mis¬ 
take of thought or of expression), according to analog} 7 , you 
must deduce what is your own destiny, and what that of other 
cells similar to you. 

In order to be able to understand yourself, you must stud } 7 
not merely the tape-worm which you see, but also micro¬ 
scopic animalcules which you cannot see, and the transfor¬ 
mation from one set of beings into another, which neither 
you nor anybody else has ever seen, and which you certainly 
will never see. 

The same holds good with art. Wherever a true science 
has existed, it has been expressed by art. Since men have 
existed they have always separated out of all their activities, 
from their varied information, the chief expression of science, 
the knowledge of man’s destination and welfare ; and art, 
in the strict sense of the word, has been the expression of 
this. 

Since men have existed, there have always been persons 
particularly sensitive to the teaching of man’s welfare and 
destiny, who have expressed in word, and upon psaltery 
and cymbals, their human struggle with deceit which led them 
aside from their true destiny, and their sufferings in this 
struggle, their hopes about the victory of good, their despair 
about the triumph of evil, and their raptures in expectation 
of coming welfare. 

Since men have existed, the true art, that which has been 
valued by men most highly, had no other destiny than to be 
the expression of science on man’s destiny and welfare. 

Always down to the present time art has served the teach¬ 
ing of life (afterwards called religion), and it has only been 
this art which men have valued so highly. 

But contemporaneously with the fact that in the place of 
the science of man’s destiny and welfare appeared the science 
of universal knowledge, since science lost its own sense and 
meaning, and the true science has been scornfully called 
religion, true art, as an important activity of men, has dis¬ 
appeared. 

As long as the church existed, and taught man’s calling 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


199 


and welfare, art served the church, and was true; but from 
the moment it left the church, and began to serve a science 
which served every thing it met, art lost its meaning, and, 
notwithstanding its old-fashioned claims, and a stupid asser¬ 
tion that art serves merely art itself, and nothing else, it 
turned out to be a trade which procures luxuries for men, and 
unavoidably mixes itself with choreography, culinary art, 
hair-dressing, and cosmetics, the producers of which may 
call themselves artists w r ith the,same right as the poets, 
painters, and musicians of our da}’. 

Looking back, we see that during thousands of years, from 
among thousands of millions of men who have lived, there 
came forth a few like Confucius, Buddha,* Solon, Socrates, 
Solomon, Homer, Isaiah, David. Apparently true artist- 
producers of spiritual food appear seldom among men, not¬ 
withstanding the fact that they appear, not from one caste 
only, but from among all men ; and it is not without cause 
that mankind have always so highly valued them. And now 
it turns out that we have no longer any need of all these 
former great factors of art and science. 

Now, according to the law of the division of labor, it is 
possible to manufacture scientific and artistic factors almost 
mechanically ; and we shall manufacture in the space of ten 
years, more great men of art and science than have been born 
among all men from the beginning of the world. Nowa¬ 
days there is a trade corporation of learned men and artists, 
and they prepare by an improved way all the mental food 
which is wanted by mankind. And they have prepared so 
much of it, that there need no longer be any remembrance 
of the old producers, not only of the very ancient, but of 
more recent, ones, — all this, we are told, was the activity 
of the theological and metaphysical period: all had to be 
destroyed, and the true, mental activity began some fifty 
years ago. 

And in these fifty years we have manufactured so many 
great men that in a German university there are more of them 
than have been in the whole world, and of sciences we have 
manufactured a great number too ; for one need only put to 
a Greek word the termination logy , and arrange the sub¬ 
ject according to ready-made paragraphs, and the science is 
made : we have thus manufactured so many sciences that not 
only one man cannot know them all, but he cannot even 
remember all their names, — these names alone would fill 


200 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN7 


a large dictionary; and every day new sciences come into 
existence. 

In this respect we are like that Finnish teacher who taught 
the children of a land-owner the Finnish language instead of 
the French. He taught very well ; but there was one draw¬ 
back,— that nobody, except himself, understood it. 

But to this there is also an explanation : Men do not 
understand all the utility 4 >f the scientific science because they 
are still under the influence of the theological period of 
knowledge, that stupid period when all the people of the 
Hebrew race, as well as the Chinese and Indians and Greeks, 
understood every thing spoken to them by their great teachers. 

But whatever may be the cause, the fact is this, — that art 
and science have always existed among mankind ; and when 
they really existed, then they were necessary and intelligible 
to all men. 

We are busy about something which we call art and science, 
and it turns out that what we are busy about is neither 
necessary nor intelligible to men. And therefore, however 
fine the things we are about may be, we have no right to call 
them art and science. 


XXXVII. 


But it is said to me, u You only give another narrower defi¬ 
nition of art and science, which science does not agree with ; 
but even this does not exclude them, and notwithstanding all 
you say, there still remains the scientific and art activities of 
men like Galileo, Bruno, Homer, Michael Angelo, Beethoven, 
Wagner, and other learned men and artists of lesser magni¬ 
tude who have devoted all their lives to art and science.” 

Usually this is said in the endeavor to establish a link 
connecting the activity of former learned men and artists 
with the modern ones, trying to forget that new principle of 
the division of labor by reason of which art and science are 
occupying now a privileged position. 

First of all, it is not possible to establish any such connec¬ 
tion between the former factors and the modern ones, as the 
holy life of the first Christian has nothing in common with 
the lives of popes: thus, the activity of men like Galileo, 
Shakspeare, Beethoven, has nothing in common with the ac¬ 
tivities of men like Tyndal, Hugo, and Wagner. As the Holy 
Fathers would have denied any connection with the Popes, 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


201 


so the ancient factors of science would have denied any 
relationship with the modern ones. 

And secondly, owing to that importance which art and 
science ascribe to themselves, we have a very clear standard 
established by them by means of which we are able to deter¬ 
mine whether they do, or do not, fulfil their destiny; and we 
therefore decide, not without proofs, but according to their 
own standard, whether that activity which calls itself art and 
science has, or has not, any right to call itself thus. 

Though the Egyptians or Greek priests performed mys¬ 
teries known to none but themselves, and said that these 
mysteries included all art and science, I could not, on the 
ground of the asserted utility of these to the people, ascertain 
the reality of their science, because this said science, accord¬ 
ing to their ipse clixil , was a supernatural one : but now we 
all have a very clear and plain standard, excluding every 
thing supernatural; art and science promise to put forth the 
mental activity of mankind for the welfare of society, or even 
of the whole of mankind. And therefore we have a right to 
call only such activity, art and science, which has this aim 
in view, and attains it. And therefore, however those learned 
men and artists may call themselves, who excogitate the the¬ 
ory of penal laws, of state laws, and of the laws of nations, 
who invent new guns and explosive substances, who compose 
obscene operas and operettas, or similarly obscene novels, 
we have no right to call such activity the activity of art and 
science, because this activity has not in view the welfare of 
the society or of mankind, but on the contrary it is directed 
to the harm of men. Therefore none of these efforts are 
either art or science. 

In like manner, however, these learned men may call them¬ 
selves, who in their simplicity are occupied during all their 
lives with the investigations of the microscopical animalcule 
and of telescopical and spectral phenomena; or those artists 
who, after having- carefully investigated the monuments of 
old times, are busy writing historical novels, making pictures, 
concocting symphonies and beautiful verses. All these men, 
notwithstanding all their zeal, cannot be, according to the 
definition of their own science, called men of science and art, 
first because their activity in science for the sake of science, 
and of art for art, has not in view man’s welfare; and sec¬ 
ondly, because we do not see any results of these activities 
for the welfare of society or mankind. 


202 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


And the fact that sometimes something comes of their 
activities useful or agreeable for some men, as out of every 
thing something useful and agreeable may result for some 
men, by no means gives us any right, according to their own 
scientific definition, to consider them to be men of art and 
science. 

In like manner, however those men may call themselves 
who excogitate the application of electricity to lighting, heat¬ 
ing, and motion ; or who invent some new chemical combi¬ 
nations, producing dynamite or fine colors; men who 
correctly play Beethoven’s symphonies ; who act on the stage, 
or paint portraits well, domestic pictures, landscapes, and 
other pictures; who compose interesting novels, the object 
of which is merely to amuse rich people, — the activity of 
these men, I say, cannot be called art and science, because 
this activity is not directed, like the activit } 7 of the brain in 
the organism, to the welfare of the whole, but is guided 
merely by personal gain, privileges, money, which one obtains 
for the inventing and producing of so-called art; and there¬ 
fore this activity cannot possibly be separated from other 
covetous, personal activity, which adds agreeable things to 
life, like the activity of innkeepers, jockeys, milliners, and 
prostitutes, and so on, because the activity of the first, the 
second, and the last, do not come under the definition of art 
and science, on the ground of the division of labor, which 
promises to serve for the welfare of all mankind. 

The scientific definition of art and science is a correct one ; 
but unluckily, the activity of modern art and science does not 
come under it. Some produce directly hurtful things, oth¬ 
ers useless things; and a third party invent trifles fit only 
for the use of rich people. They may all be very good per¬ 
sons, but the } 7 do not fulfil what they, according to their own 
definition, have taken upon themselves to fulfil; and therefore 
they have as little right to call themselves men of art and 
science as the modern clergy, who do not fulfil their duties, 
have the right to consider themselves the bearers and teach¬ 
ers of divine truth. 

And it is not difficult to understand why the factors of 
modern art and science have not fulfilled, and cannot fulfil, 
their calling. They do not fulfil it, because they have con¬ 
verted their duty into a right. The scientific and art activi¬ 
ties, in their true sense, are fruitful only when they ignore 
their rights, and know only their duties. Mankind value 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


203 


this activity so highly, only because it is a self-denying 
one. 

If men are really called to serve others by mental labor, 
they will have to suffer in performing this labor, because it 
is only by sufferings that spiritual fruit is produced. Self- 
denying and suffering are the lot and portion of a thinker 
and an artist, because their object is the welfare of men. 
Men are wretched : they suffer and go to ruin. One cannot 
wait and lose one’s time. 

A thinker and an artist will never sit on the heights of 
Olympus, as we are apt to imagine : he must suffer in com¬ 
pany with men in order to find salvation or consolation. He 
will suffer because he is constantly in anxiety and agitation : 
he might have found out and told what would give happiness 
to men, might have saved them from suffering ; and lie has 
neither found it out nor said it, and to-morrow it may be too 
late — he may die. And therefore suffering and self-sacrifice 
will always be the lot of the thinker and the artist. 

Not that man will become a thinker and an artist who 
is brought up in an establishment where learned men and 
artists are created (but, in reality, they create only destroy¬ 
ers of art and science), and who obtains a diploma, and is 
well provided for, for life, but he who would gladly abstain 
from thinking, and expressing that which is ingrafted in his 
soul, but which he cannot overlook, being drawn to it by two 
irresistible powers, — his own inward impulse and the wants 
of men. 

Thinkers and artists cannot be sleek, fat men, enjoying 
themselves, and self-conceited. Spiritual and mental activ¬ 
ity and their expression, are really necessary for others, and 
are the most difficult of men’s callings,—a cross, as it is 
called in the gospel. 

And the only one certain characteristic of the presence of 
a calling is the self-denying, the sacrifice of one’s self in 
order to manifest thepower in grafted in man for the benefit 
of others. To teach how many insects there are in the 
world, and observe the spots on the sun, to write novels and 
operas, can be done without suffering ; but to teach men their 
welfare, which entirely consists in self-denial, and in serving 
others, and to express powerfully this teaching, cannot be 
done without self-denial. 

The Church existed in her purity as long as her teachers 
endured patiently and suffered ; but as soon as they became 


204 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


fat and sleek, their teaching activity was ended. “Formerly,” 
say the people, “ priests were of gold, and chalices of wood; 
now chalices are of gold, and priests of wood.” It was not 
in vain that Christ died on a cross: it is not in vain that 
sacrifice and suffering conquer every thing. 

And as for our art and sciences, they are provided for: 
they have diplomas, and everybody is only thinking about 
how to provide still better for them ; that is, to make it im¬ 
possible for them to serve men. A true art and a true 
science have two unmistakable characteristics, — the first, an 
interior one, that a minister of art or science fulfils his calling, 
not for the sake of gain, but with self-denial ; and the second, 
an exterior one, that his productions are intelligible to all 
men, whose welfare he is aiming at. 

Whatever men may consider to be their destiny and wel¬ 
fare, science will be the teacher of this destiny and welfare, 
and art the expression of this teaching. The laws of Solon, 
of Confucius, are science ; the teachings of Moses, of Christ, 
are science ; the temples in Athens, the psalms of David, 
church worship, are art: but finding out the fourth dimension 
of matter, and tabulating chemical combinations, and so on, 
have never been, and never will be, science. 

The place of true science is occupied, in our time, by 
theology and law ; the place of true art is occupied by the 
church and state ceremonies, in which nobody believes, and 
which are not considered seriously by anybody: and that 
which with us is called art and science, is only the productions 
of idle minds and feelings which have in view to stimulate 
similarly idle minds and feelings, and which are unintelligible 
and dumb for the people, because they have not their welfare 
in view. 

Since we have known the lives of men, we always and 
everywhere have found a ruling false doctrine, calling itself 
science, which does not show men the true meaning of life, 
but rather hides it from them. 

So it was among the Egyptians, the Indians, the Chinese, 
and partially among the Greeks (sophists) ; and among the 
nasties, Gnostics, and cabalists ; in the Middle Ages, in 
theology, scholasticism, alchemy ; and so on down to our 
days. How fortunate indeed are we to be living in such a 
peculiar time, when that mental activity which calls itself 
science is not only free from errors, but, as we are assured, 
is in a state of peculiar progress ! Does not this good fortune 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


205 


come from the fact that man can not and will not see his own 
deformities?- While of the sciences of theologians, and that 
of cabalists, nothing is left but empty words, why should we 
be so particularly fortunate? 

The characteristics of our and of former times are quite 
similar: there is the same self-conceit and blind assurance 
that we only are on the true wa\', and that only with us true 
knowledge begins ; there are the same expectations that we 
shall presently discover something very wonderful; and 
there is the same exposure of our error, in the fact that all 
our wisdom remains w T ith us, while the masses of the people 
do not understand it, and neither accept nor want it. Our 
position is a very difficult one, but why should we not look 
it in the face? 

It is time to come to our senses, and to look more closely 
to ourselves. We are, indeed, nothing but scribes and Phar¬ 
isees, who, sitting in Moses’ seat, and having the key of the 
kingdom of God, do not enter themselves, and refuse entrance 
to others. 

We, priests of art and science, are most wretched deceivers, 
who have much less right to our position tliau the most 
cunning and depraved priests ever had. 

For our privileged position, there is no excuse whatever: 
we have taken up this position by a kind of swindling, and 
we retain it by deceit. Pagan priests, the clergy, as well 
Russian as Roman Catholic, however depraved they may 
have been, had rights to their position, because the}' pro¬ 
fessed to teach men about life and salvation. And we, wffio 
have cut the ground from under their feet, and proved to men 
that they were deceivers, we have taken their place, and not 
only do not teach men about life, we even acknowledge that 
there is no necessity for them to learn. We suck the blood 
of the people, and for this we teach our children Greek and 
Latin grammars in order that they also may continue the 
same parasitic life which we are living. 

We say, There have been castes, we will abolish them. 
But what means the fact that some men and their children 
work, and other men and their children do not work? 

Bring a Hindu who does not know our language, and 
show him the Russian and the European lives of many gener¬ 
ations, and he will recognize the existence of two important 
definite castes of working-people and of non-working-people 
as they are in existence in his own country. As in his coun- 


206 


WI1AT MUST WE DO THENf 


try, so also among us, the right of not working is acquired 
through a peculiar initiation which we call art and science, 
and generally education. 

This education it is, and the perversions of reason as¬ 
sociated with it, that have brought us to this wonderful 
folly, whence it has come to pass that we do not see what is 
so plain and certain. We are eating up the lives of our 
brethren, and consider ourselves to be Christians, humane, 
educated, and quite righteous people. 


XXXVIII. 

What is to be done? What must we do? 

This question, which includes the acknowledgment of the 
fact that our life is bad and unrighteous, and at the same 
time hints that there is no possibility of changing it, — this 
question I hear everywhere, and therefore I chose it for the 
title of my work. 

I have described my own sufferings, m3 7 search, and the 
answer which I have found to this question. 

I am a man, like all others ; and if I distinguish mj’self 
from an average man of my own circle in any thing, it is 
chiefly in the fact that I, more than this average man, have 
served and indulged the false teaching of our world, that 
I have been praised by the men of the prevalent school of 
teaching, and that therefore I must be more depraved, and 
have gone farther astray, than most of my fellows. 

Therefore I think that the answer to this question which I 
have found for myself will do for all sincere persons who 
will put the same question to themselves. First of all, to 
the question, 44 What is to be done?” I answer that we 
must neither deceive other men nor ourselves ; that we must 
not be afraid of the truth, whatever the result may be. 

We all know what it is to deceive other men ; and notwith¬ 
standing this, we do deceive from morning to evening, — 
“Not at home,” when I am in ; 44 Very glad,” when I am 
not at all glad; “Esteemed,” when I do not esteem; “I 
have no money,” when I have it, and so on. 

We consider the deception of others, particularly a cer¬ 
tain kind of deception, to be evil; but we are not afraid 
to deceive ourselves : but the worst direct lie to men, seeing 
its result, is nothing in comparison with that lie to ourselves 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THEN? 


207 


according to which we shape our lives. Now, this very lie 
we must avoid if we wish to be able to answer the question, 
“ What is to he done?” 

And, indeed, how am I to answer the question as to 
what is to be done, when every thing I do, all my life, is 
based upon a lie and I carefully give out this lie for truth 
to others and to myself? Not to lie in this sense means 
to be not afraid of truth ; not to invent excuses, and not to 
accept excuses invented by others, in order to hide from one’s 
self the deduction of reason and conscience ; not to be afraid 
of contradicting all our environment, and of being left alone 
with reason and conscience; not to be afraid of that con¬ 
dition to which truth and conscience lead us : however dreadful 
it may be, it cannot be worse than that which is based upon 
deceit. 

To avoid tying, for men in our privileged position of 
mental labor, means not to be afraid of learning. Perhaps 
we owe so much that we should never be able to pay it all; 
but, however much we may owe, we must make out our bill : 
however far we have gone astray, it is better to return than 
to continue straying. 

Lying to our fellows is always disadvantageous. Every 
business is always more directly done, and more quickly too, 
by truth than by lies. Lying to other men makes the mat¬ 
ter only more complicated, and retards the’ decision ; but 
tying to one’s self, which is given out to be the truth, entirety 
ruins the life of man. 

If a man considers a wrong road to be a right one, then 
his every step only leads him farther from his aim : a man 
who has been walking for a long time on a wrong road may 
find out for himself, or be told by others, that his road is a 
wrong one ; but if he, being afraid of the thought of how 
far he has gone astray, tries to assure himself that he may, 
by following this wrong way, still come across the right one, 
then he will certainty never find it. If a man becomes 
afraid of the truth, and, on seeing it, will not acknowledge 
it, but takes falsehood for truth, then this man will never learn 
what is to be done. 

We, not only rich men, but men in a privileged position, 
so-called educated men, have gone so far astray that we 
require either a firm resolution or very great sufferings on our 
false way in order to come to our senses again, and to recog¬ 
nize the lie by which we live. 


208 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


I became aware of the lie of our life, thanks to those suf¬ 
ferings to which my wrong road led me; and, having 
acknowledged the error of the way on which I was bent, I 
had the boldness to go, first in theory, then in reality, 
wherever my reason and conscience led me, without any de¬ 
liberation as to whither they were tending. 

And I was rewarded. 

All the complex, disjointed, intricate, and meaningless 
phenomena of life surrounding me became of a sudden clear ; 
and my position, formerly so strange and vile, among these 
phenomena, became of a sudden natural and eas} T . 

And in this new situation my activity has exactly deter¬ 
mined itself, but it is quite a different activity from that 
which appeared possible to me before : it is a new activity, 
far more qui 6 t, affectionate, and joyous. The very thing 
which frightened me before, now attracts me. 

And therefore, I think that every one who sincerely puts 
to himself the question, “What is to be done?” and in 
answering this question, does not lie or deceive himself, but 
goes wherever his reason and conscience may lead him, that 
man has already answered the question. 

If he will only avoid deceiving himself, he will find out 
what to do, where to go, and how to act. There is only one 
thing which may hinder him in finding an answer, — that 
is a too high* estimate of himself, and his own position. 
So it was with me ; and therefore the second answer to the 
question, “ What is to be done?” resulting from the first, 
consisted for me in repenting, in the full meaning of this 
word, that is, entirely changing the estimate of my own 
position aud activity ; instead of considering such to be use¬ 
ful and of importance, we must come to acknowledge it to 
be harmful and trifling; instead of considering ourselves 
educated, we must get to see our ignorance; instead of 
imagining ourselves to be kind and moral, we must acknowl¬ 
edge that we are immoral and cruel; instead of our impor¬ 
tance, we must see our own insignificance. 

I say, that besides avoiding lying to myself, I had more¬ 
over to repent , because, though the one results from the 
other, the wrong idea about my great importance was so 
much a part of my own nature, that until I had sincerely 
repented, and had put aside that wrong estimate of myself 
which I had, I did not see the enormity of the lie of which I 
had been guilty. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


209 


It was only when I repented, — that is, left off considering 
myself to be a peculiar man, and began to consider myself 
to be like all other men, — it was then that my way became 
clear to me. Before this, I was not able to answer the ques¬ 
tion, “ What is to be done?” because the very question it¬ 
self was put incorrectly. 

Before I repented, I had put the question thus: “What 
activity should I choose, I, the man with the education I 
have acquired? How can I compensate by this education 
and these talents for what I have been taking away from the 
people?” 

This question was a false one, because it included a wrong 
idea as to my not being like other men, but a peculiar man, 
called to serve other men with those talents and that educa¬ 
tion which I had acquired in forty years. 

I had put the question to myself, but in realit}’ I had already 
answered it in advance by having determined beforehand the 
kind of activity agreeable to myself by which I was called 
upon to serve men. I realty asked myself, “ How have I, 
so fine a writer, one so very well informed, and with such 
talents, how can I utilize them for the benefit of man¬ 
kind?” 

But the question ought to have been put thus, as it would 
have to be put to a learned rabbi who had studied all the 
Talmud, and knew the exact number of the letters in the 
Holy Scripture, and all the subtleties of his science : “ What 
have I to do, who, from unlucky circumstances, have lost 
my best years in study instead of accustoming myself to 
labor, in learning the French language, the piano, grammar, 
geography, law, poetry ; in reading novels, romances, philo¬ 
sophical theories, and in performing military exercises? what 
have I to do, who have passed the best 3’ears of my life in 
idle occupations, depraving the soul ? what have I to do, 
notwithstanding these unlucky conditions of the past, in 
order to requite those men, who, during all this time, have 
fed and clothed me, and who still continue to feed and to 
clothe me?” 

If the question had been put thus, after I had repented, 
“ What have I, so ruined a man, to do?” the answer would 
have been easy: First of all, I must try to get my living 
honestly, — that is, learn not to live upon the shoulders of 
others; and while learning this, and after I have learned it, 
to try on every occasion to be of use to men with my hands 


210 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENf 


and with my feet, as well as with my brain and my heart, and 
with all of me that is wanted by men. 

And therefore I say that for one of my own circle, besides 
avoiding lying to others and to ourselves, it is necessary 
moreover to repent, to lay aside that pride about our edu¬ 
cation, refinement, and talents, not considering ourselves 
to be benefactors of the people, advanced men, who are 
ready to share our useful acquirements with the people, but 
to acknowledge ourselves to be entirely guilty, ruined, good- 
for-nothing man, who desire to turn over a new leaf, and not 
to be benefactors of the people, but to cease to offend and 
to humiliate them. Very often good young people, who sym¬ 
pathize with the negative part of my writings, put to me the 
question, “What must I then do? What have I, who have 
finished my study in the university or in some other high 
establishment, — what have.I to do in order to be useful?” 

These young people ask the question ; but in the depths of 
their souls they have already decided that that education 
which they have received is their great advantage, and that 
they wish to serve the people by this very advantage. 

And, therefore, there is one thing which they do not do, — 
honestly and critically examine what they call their educa¬ 
tion, by asking themselves whether it is a good or a bad thing. 

But if they do this, the}" will be unavoidably led to deny 
their education, and to begin to learn anew ; and this is alone 
what is wanted. They never will be able to answer the 
question, as to what there is to be done, because they put it 
wrongly. The question should be put thus: “How can I, 
a helpless, useless man, seeing now the misfortune of hav¬ 
ing lost" my best years in studying the scientific Talmud, 
pernicious for soul and body, how can I rectify this mistake, 
and learn to serve men?” But the question is always put 
thus: “How can I, who have acquired so much fine in¬ 
formation, how can I be useful to men with this my 
information?” 

And, therefore, a man will never answer the question, 
“ What is to be done? ” until he leaves off deceiving himself 
and repents. And repentance is not dreadful, even as truth 
is not dreadful, but it is equally beneficent and fruitful of 
good. We need only accept the whole truth and fully repent 
in order to understand that in life no one has any rights or 
privileges, and that there is no end of duties, and no limits 
to them, and that the first and unquestionable duty of a man 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


211 


is to take a part in the struggle with nature for his own life, 
and for the lives of other men. And this acknowledgment 
of men’s duty forms the essence of the third answer to the 
question, “ What is to be done? ” 

I have tried to avoid deceiving myself. I have endeavored 
to extirpate the remainders of the false estimate of the 
importance of my education and talents, and to repent; but 
before answering the question, What is to be done? stands 
a new difficulty. 

There are so many things to be done, that one requires to 
know what is to be done in particular? And the answer 
to this question has been given me by the sincere repentance 
of the evil in which I have been living. 

What is to be done? What is there exactly to be done? 
everybody keeps asking ; and I, too, kept asking this, while, 
under the influence of a high opinion of my own calling, I 
had not seen that my first and unquestionable business is to 
earn my living, clothing, heating, building, and so forth, 
and in doing this to serve others as well as myself, because, 
since the world has existed, the first and unquestionable duty 
of every man has been comprised in this. 

In this one business, man receives, if he has already begun 
to take part in it, the full satisfaction of all the bodily and 
mental wants of his nature: to feed, clothe, take care of 
himself and of his family, will satisfy, his bodily wants ; to 
do the same for others, will satisfy his spiritual. 

Every other activity of man is only lawful when these first 
have been satisfied. In whatever department a man thinks 
to be his calling, whether in governing the people, in protect¬ 
ing his countrymen, in officiating at divine services, in teach¬ 
ing, in inventing the means of increasing the delights of life, 
in discovering the laws of the universe, in incorporating 
eternal truths in artistic images, the very first and the most 
unquestionable duty of a reasonable man will always consist 
in taking part in the struggle with nature for preserving his 
own life and the lives of other men. • 

This duty will always rank first, because the most neces¬ 
sary thing for men is life : and therefore, in order to protect 
and to teach men, and to make their lives more agreeable, it 
is necessary to keep this very life; while by not taking part 
in the struggle, and by swallowing up the labor of others, 
lives are destroyed. And it is folly to endeavor to serve 
men by destroying their lives. 


212 


WIIAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


plan’s duty to acquire in the struggle with nature the 
means of living, will alwa} 7 s be unquestionably the very first 
of all duties, because it is the law of life, the violation of 
which unavoidably brings with it a punishment by destroying 
the bodily or mental life of man. If a man, living alone, 
free himself from the duty of struggling with nature, he will 
at once be punished by his body perishing. 

But if a man free himself from this duty by compelling 
other men to fulfil it for him, in ruining their lives, he will be 
at once punished by the destruction of his reasonable life ; 
that is, the life which has a reasonable sense in it. 

I had been so perverted by my antecedents, and this first 
and unquestionable law of God or nature is so hidden in our 
present world, that the fulfilling of it had seemed to me 
strange, and I was afraid and ashamed of it, as if the fulfil¬ 
ment, and not the violation, of this eternal unquestionable law 
were strange, unnatural, and shameful. At first it seemed to 
me, that, in order to fulfil this law, some sort of accommoda¬ 
tion was necessary, some established association of fellow- 
thinkers, the consent of the family, and life in the country 
(not in town) : then I felt ashamed, as if I were putting 
myself forward in performing things so unusual to our life as 
bodily labor, and I did not know how to begin. 

But I needed only to understand that this was not some 
exclusive aetivit} 7 , which I had to invent and to arrange, but 
that it was merely returning from a false condition in which 
I had been to a natural one, merely rectifying that lie in 
which I had been living, — I had only to acknowledge all this, 
in order that all the difficulties should vanish. 

It was not at all necessary to arrange and accommodate 
any thing, or to wait for the consent of other people, because 
everywhere, in whatever condition I was, there were men 
who fed, dressed, and warmed me as well as themselves ; and 
everywhere, under all circumstances, I was able to do these 
for myself and for them, if I had sufficient time and 
strength. 

Nor could I feel a false shame in performing matters un¬ 
usual and strange to me, because, in not doing so, I already 
experienced, not a false, but a real, shame. 

And having come to this acknowledgment, and to the prac¬ 
tical deduction from it, I had been fully rewarded for not 
having been afraid of the deductions of reason, and for having 
gone whither they led me. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


213 


Having come to this practical conclusion, I was struck by 
the facility and simplicity of the solution of all those problems 
which had formerly seemed to me so difficult and complicated. 
To the question, “ What have we to do? ” I received a very 
plain answer: Do first what is necessary for yourself; ar¬ 
range all you can do by yourself, — your tea-urn, stove, water, 
and clothes. 

To the question, “Would not this seem strange to those 
who had been accustomed to do all this for me?” it ap¬ 
peared that it was strange only during a week, and after a 
week it seemed more strange for me to return to my former 
condition. 

In answer to the question, “Is it necessary to organize 
this physical labor, to establish a society in a village upon 
this basis? ” it appeared that it was not at all necessary to do 
all this ; that if the labor does not aim at rendering idleness 
possible, and at utilizing other men’s labor, as is the case 
with men who save up money, but merely the satisfying of 
necessities, then such labor will naturally induce people to 
leave towns for the country, where this labor is most agree¬ 
able and productive. 

There was also no need to establish a society, because a 
workingman will naturally associate with other working- 
people. In answer to the question, “ Would not this labor 
take up all my time, and would it not deprive me of the pos¬ 
sibility of that mental activity which I am so fond of, and to 
which I have become accustomed, and which in moments of 
self-conceit I consider to be useful to others?” the answer will 
be quite an unexpected one. In proportion to bodily exercise 
the energy of my mental activity increased, having freed 
itself from all that was superfluous. 

In fact, having spent eight hours in phj’sical labor, — 
half a day,—which formerly I used to spend in endeavor¬ 
ing to struggle with dulness, there still remained for me 
eight hours, out of which in my circumstances I required five 
for mental labor; and if I, a very prolific writer, who had 
been doing nothing during forty years but writing, and who 
had written three hundred printed sheets, that if during these 
forty years I had been doing ordinary work along with work¬ 
ing-people, then, not taking into consideration winter even¬ 
ings and holidays, if I had been reading and learning during 
the five hours a day, and written only on holidays two pages a 
day (and 1 have sometimes written sixteen pages a day), 1 


214 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


should have written the same three hundred printed sheets in 
fourteen years. 

A wonderful thing, perhaps, but a most simple arithmetical 
calculation which every boy of seven years of age may do, 
and which I had never done. Day and night have together 
twenty-four hours ; we sleep eight hours ; there remain six¬ 
teen hours. If any man labor mentally five hours a day, he 
will do a vast amount of business; what do we, then, do 
during the remaining eleven hours? 

So it appears that physical labor not only does not exclude 
the possibility of mental activity, but improves and stimu¬ 
lates it. 

In answer to the question whether this physical labor would 
deprive me of many innocent enjoyments proper to man, 
such as the enjoyment of art, the acquirement of knowledge, 
of social intercourse, and, generally, of the happiness of life, 
it was really quite the reverse : the more intense my physical 
labor was, the more it approached that labor which is con¬ 
sidered the hardest, that is, agricultural labor, the more I 
acquired enjoyments, knowledge, and the closer and more 
affectionate was my intercourse with mankind, and the 
more happiness did I feel in life. 

In answer to the question (which I hear so often from men 
who are not quite sincere), u What result can there be from 
such an awfully small drop in the sea? what is all my per¬ 
sonal physical labor in comparison with the sea of labor 
which I swallow up?” 

To this question I also received a very unexpected 
answer. 

It appeared that as soon as I had made physical labor the 
ordinary condition of my life, then at once the greatest part 
of my false and expensive habits and wants which I had, 
while I had been physically idle, ceased of themselves, with¬ 
out any endeavor on my part. To say nothing of the habit 
of turning day into night, and vice versa, of my bedding, 
clothes, my conventional cleanliness, which all became im¬ 
possible and embarrassing when I began to labor physically, 
both the quantity and the quality of my food was totally 
changed. Instead of the sweet, rich, delicate, complicated, 
and highly spiced food, which I was formerly fond of, I now 
required and obtained plain food as the most agreeable, — 
sour cabbage soup, porridge, black bread, tea with a bit of 
sugar. 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


215 


So that, to say nothing of the example of common work¬ 
ingmen who are satisfied with little, with whom I came into 
closer intercourse, my very wants themselves were gradually 
changed by my life of labor; so that my drop of physical 
labor in proportion to my growing accustomed to this labor 
and acquiring the ways of it, became indeed more perceptible 
in the ocean of common labor ; and in proportion as my labor 
grew more fruitful, my demands for other men’s labor grew 
less and less, and my life naturally, without effort or priva¬ 
tion, came nearer to that simple life of which I could not 
even have dreamed without fulfilling the law of labor. 

It became apparent that my former most expensive de¬ 
mands— the demands of vanit}” and amusement—were the 
direct result of an idle life. With physical labor, there was 
no room for vanity, and no need for amusement, because my 
time was agreeably occupied ; and after weariness simple rest 
while drinking tea, or reading a book, or conversing with the 
members of my family, was far more agreeable than the 
theatre, playing at cards, concerts, or large parties. 

In answer to the question, u Would not this unusual labor 
be hurtful to my health, which is necessary for me in order 
that I may serve men ? ” it appeared that, in spite of the posi¬ 
tive, assurance of eminent doctors that hard physical labor, 
especially at my age, might have the worst results (and that 
Swedish gymnastics, riding, and other expedients intended 
to supply the natural conditions of man, would be far better), 
the harder I worked, the stronger, sounder, more cheerful, 
and kinder, I felt myself. 

So that it became undoubtedly certain that just as all those 
inventions of the human mind, such as newspapers, theatres, 
concerts, parties, balls, cards, magazines, novels, are nothing 
else than means to sustain the mental life of men out of its 
natural condition of labor for others, in the same way 
all the hygienic and medical inventions of the human mind 
for the accommodation of food, drink, dwelling, ventilation, 
warming of rooms, clothes, medicines, mineral waters, gym¬ 
nastics, electric and other cures, are all merely means to 
sustain the bodily life of man out of its natural conditions of 
labor; that all these are nothing else than an establishment 
hermetically closed, in which, by the means of chemical ap¬ 
paratus, the evaporation of water for the plants is arranged 
when you only need to open the window, and do that which 
is natural, not only to men but to beasts too ; in other words, 


216 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


having absorbed . the food, and thus produced a charge of 
energy, to discharge it by muscular labor. 

All the profound thoughts of hygiene and of the art of 
healing for the men of our circle are like the efforts of a me¬ 
chanic, who, having stopped all the valves of an overheated 
engine, should invent something to prevent this engine from 
bursting. 

When I had plainly understood all this, it became to me 
ridiculous, that I, through a long series of doubt, research, and 
much thinking, had arrived at this extraordinary truth, that 
if man has eyes, they are to be seen through ; ears, to hear by ; 
feet to walk with, and hands and back to work with, — and 
that if man will not use these, his members, for what they are 
meant, then it will be w r orse for him. I came to this conclu¬ 
sion, that with us, privileged people, the same thing has 
happened which happened to the horses of a friend of mine: 
The steward, who was not fond of horses, and did not 
understand any thing about them, having received from his 
master orders to prepare the best cobs for sale, chose the 
best out of the drove of horses, and put them into the stable, 
fed them upon oats ; but being over-anxious, he trusted them 
to nobody, neither rode them himself, nor drove nor led them. 

All of these horses became, of course, good for nothing. 

The same has happened to us with this difference, — that 
you cannot deceive horses, and, in order not to let them out, 
they must be secured ; and we are kept in unnatural and 
hurtful conditions by all sorts of temptations, which fasten 
and hold us as with chains. 

We have arranged for ourselves a life which is against 
the moral and physical nature of man, and we use all the 
powers of our mind in order to assure men that this life is 
a real one. All that we call culture,—our science and arts 
for improving the delights of life, — all these are only meant 
to deceive man’s natural requirements: all that we call 
hygiene, and the art of healing, are endeavors to deceive 
the natural physical want of human nature. 

But these deceits have their limit, and we are come to 
these limits. “ If such be real human life, then it is better 
not to live at all,” says the fashionable philosophy of 
Schopenhauer and Hartman. “ If such be life, it is better 
for future generations, too, not to live,” says the indulgent 
healing art, and invents means to destroy women’s fecundity. 

In the Bible the law to human beings is expressed thus: 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN1 217 

“ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” and “ In 
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” 

The peasant Bondaref, who wrote an article about this, 
threw great light upon the wisdom of this sentence. Dur¬ 
ing the whole of my life, two thinking men — Russians — 
have exercised a great moral influence over me: they have 
enriched my thoughts, and enlightened my contemplation of 
the w r orld. 

These men were neither poets, nor learned men, nor 
preachers : they were two remarkable men, both living peas¬ 
ants,— Sutaief and Bondaref. But “ nous avons change 
tout 9a,” as says one of Moli&re’s personages, talking at 
random about the healing art, and saying that the liver is 
on the left side, u we have changed all that.” Men need 
not work, —all work will be done by machines; and women 
need not bring forth children. The healing art will teach 
different means of avoiding this, and there are already too 
many people in the world. 

In the Krapivensky district, 1 there lives a ragged peasant 
who during the war was a purchaser of meat for a commis¬ 
sary of stores. Having become acquainted with this function¬ 
ary, and having seen his comfortable life, he became mad, 
and now thinks that he, too, can live as gentlemen do, without 
working, being provided for by the Emperor. 

This peasant now calls himself “ the Most Serene Marshal 
Prince Blokhin, purveyor of war-stores of all kinds.” 

He says of himself that he has gone through all ranks, 
and for his services during the war he has to receive from 
the Emperor an unlimited bank-account, clothes, uniforms, 
horses, carriages, tea, servants, and all kinds of provision. 
When anybody asks him whether he would like to work 
a little, he alwaj’S answers, “Thanks: the peasants will 
attend to all that.” When we say to him that the peasants 
also may not be disposed to work, he answers, “ Machines 
have been invented to ease the labor of peasants. They 
have no difficulty in their business.” When we ask him 
what is he living for, he answers, “ To pass away the time.” 

I always consider this man as a mirror. 1 see in him 
myself and all my class. To pass through all ranks in 
order to live, to pass away the time, and to receive an 
unlimited bank-account, while peasants attend to every 

1 Count Tolstoi’s village of Yasnaya Polyana is situated in this district.— 
Am. Ed. 


218 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


thing, and find it easy to do so, because of the invention 
of machines. 

This is the very form of the foolish belief of men of our 
class. When we ask what have we particularly to do, we 
are in reality asking nothing, but only asserting — not so 
sincerely indeed as the Most Serene Marshal Prince Blokhin, 
who had passed through all ranks, and lost his mind — that 
we do not wish to do any thing. 

He who has come to his senses cannot ask this, because 
from one side all that he makes use of has been done, and 
is being done, by the hands of men : on the other side, as 
soon as a healthy man has got up and breakfasted, he feels 
the inclination to work, as well with his feet as with his 
hands and brain. In order to find work, he has only not to 
restrain himself from labor. Only he who considers labor 
to be a shame, like the lady who asked her guest not to 
trouble herself to open the door, but to wait till she called 
a servant to do it, only such persons can ask what is there 
to be done in particular. 

The difficulty is not in inventing some work, — every one 
has enough to do for himself and for others, — but in losing 
this criminal view of life, that we eat and sleep for our own 
pleasure, and in appropriating that simple and correct view 
in which ever}’ working-person grows up, that man first of 
all is a machine which is charged with food, in order to 
earn his living, and that therefore it is shameful, difficult, 
and impossible to eat and not to work ; that to eat and not to 
work is a most dangerous state, and as bad as incendiarism. 

It is necessary merely to have this consciousness, and we 
shall find work will always be pleasant, and capable of satis- 
fjing all the wants of our soul and body. 

I picture to myself the whole matter thus: Every man’s 
day is divided by his meals into four parts, or four stages 
as it is called by the peasants: First, before breakfast; 
secondly, from breakfast to dinner; thirdly, from dinner to 
poldnik (a slight evening meal between dinner and supper) ; 
and fourthly, from poldnik to night. The activity of man 
to which he is drawn, is also divided into four kinds: First, 
the activity of the muscles, the labor of the hands, feet, 
shoulders, back, — hard labor by which one perspires; 
secondly, the activity of the fingers and wrists, the activity 
of skill and handicraft; thirdly, the activity of the intellect 
and imagination ; fourthly, the activity of intercourse with 
other men. 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THENt 


219 


And the goods which man makes use of may also be 
divided into four kinds: First, every man makes use of the 
productions of hard labor,—bread, cattle, buildings, wells, 
bridges, and so on ; secondly, the productions of handicraft,— 
clothes, boots, hardware, and so on ; thirdly, the productions 
of mental activity, — science, art; and fourthly, the inter¬ 
course with men, acquaintanceship, societies. 

And I thought that it would be the best thing so to arrange 
the occupations of the day that one might be able to exercise 
all these four faculties, and to return all the four kinds of 
production of labor, which one makes use of; so that the 
four parts of the day were devoted, first, to hard labor; 
secondl} 7 , to mental labor ; thirdly, to handicraft; fourthly, to 
the intercourse with men. It would be good if one could so 
arrange his labor; but if it is not possible to arrange thus, 
one thing is important, — to acknowledge the duty of labor¬ 
ing, the duty of making a good use of each part of the day. 

I thought that it would be only then that the false division 
of labor would disappear which now rules our societ}’, and a 
just division would be established which should not interfere 
with the happiness of mankind. 

I, for instance, have all my life been busy with mental 
work. I had said to myself that I have thus divided the 
labor that my special work is writing ; that is, mental labor: 
and all other works necessary for me, 1 left to be done by 
other men, or rather compelled them to do it. But this ar¬ 
rangement, seemingly so convenient for mental labor, became 
most inconvenient, especially for mental labor. I have been 
writing, all my life, have accommodated my food, sleep, 
amusements, with reference to this special labor, and besides 
this work I did nothing. 

The results of which were, first, that I had been narrow¬ 
ing the circle of my observation and information, and often 
I had not any object to stud} 7 , and therefore, having had to 
describe the life of men (the life of men is a continual prob¬ 
lem of every mental activity), I felt my ignorance, and had to 
learn and to ask about such things, which every one not 
occupied with a special work knows ; secondly, it happened 
that when I sat down to write, I often had no inward inclina¬ 
tion to write, and nobody wanted my writing itself, that is, 
my thoughts, but people merely wanted my name for profits 
in the magazines. 

I made great efforts to write what I could; sometimes I 


220 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


did not succeed at all; sometimes succeeded in writing some¬ 
thing very bad, and I felt dissatisfied and dull. But now 
since I have acknowledged the necessit} T of physical labor as 
well as hard labor, and also that of handicraft, it is all quite 
different: my time is occupied humbly, but certainly in a use¬ 
ful way, and pleasantly and instructively for me. 

And therefore I, for the sake of my specialty, leave off 
this undoubtedly useful and pleasant occupation, only when I 
feel an inward want, or see a direct demand for my literary 
work. And this has improved the quality, and therefore the 
usefulness and pleasantness, of my special labor. 

So that .it has happened that my occupation with those 
physical works, which are necessaiy for me as well as for 
every man, not only did not interfere with my special ac¬ 
tivity, but was a necessary condition of the utility, quality, 
and pleasantness of this activity. 

A bird is so created that it is necessary for it to fly, to 
walk, to peck, to consider; and when it does all this, it is 
satified and happy ; then it is a bird. Exactly so with a man 
when he walks, turns over heavy things, lifts them up, carries 
them, works with his fingers, eyes, ears, tongue, brain, then 
onlj T is he satisfied, then only is he a man. 

A man who has come to recognize his calling to labor will 
naturally be inclined to that change of labor which is proper 
for him for the satisfying of his outward and inward wants, 
and he will reverse this order only when he feels an irresist¬ 
ible impulse to some special labor, and other men will require 
from him this labor. The nature of labor is such that the 
satisfying of all men’s wants requires that very alternation 
of different kinds of labor which renders labor easy and 
pleasant. 

Only the erroneous idea that labor is a curse could lead 
men to the freeing themselves from some kinds of labor, that 
is, to the seizure of other men’s labor which requires a forced 
occupation with a special labor from other men wdiich is 
called nowadays the division of labor. 

We have become so accustomed to our false conception of 
the arrangement of labor that it seems to 11s that for a boot¬ 
maker, a machinist, a writer, a musician, it would be better 
to be freed from the labor proper to man. Where there is 
no violence over other men’s labor, nor a false belief in the 
pleasures of idleness, no man for the sake of his special labor 
will free himself from physical labor necessary for the satis- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


221 


fying of his wants, because special occupation is not a privi¬ 
lege, but a sacrifice of a man’s inclination for the sake of his 
brethren. 

A boot-maker in a village having torn himself from his 
usual pleasant labor in the field, and having begun his labor 
of mending or making boots for his neighbors, deprives him¬ 
self of a pleasant, useful labor in the field for the sake of 
others, only because he is fond of sewing, and knows that 
nobody will do it better than he does, and that people will be 
thankful to him. 

But he cannot wish to deprive himself for all his life of 
the pleasant alternation of labor. The same with the sta- 
rosta, the machinist, the writer, the learned man. 

It is only to us with our perverted ideas, that it seems, 
when the master sends his clerk to be a peasant, or 
government sentences one of its ministers to deportation, 
that they are punished and have been dealt with hardly. 
But in realit} 7 they have had a great good done to them ; that 
is, they have exchanged their heavy special work for a pleas¬ 
ant alternation of labor. 

In a natural society all is quite different. I know a com¬ 
mune where the people earn their living themselves. One of 
the members of this community was more educated than the 
rest; and they required him to deliver lectures, for which he 
had to prepare himself during the day, in order to be able to 
deliver them in the evening. He did it joyfully, feeling that 
he was useful to others, and that he could do it well. But 
he got tired of the exclusive mental labor, and his health suf¬ 
fered accordingly. The members of the community therefore 
pitied him, and asked him to come again and labor in the 
field. 

For men who consider labor to be the essential thing and 
the joy of life, the ground, the basis, of it will always be 
the struggle with nature, — not only agricultural labor, but 
also that of handicraft, mental work, and intercourse with 
men. 

The divergence from one or many of these kinds of labor, 
and specialties of labor, will be performed only when a 
man of special gifts, being fond of this work, and knowing 
that he performs it better than anybody else, will sacrifice 
his own advantage in order to fulfil the demands of others 
put directly to him. 

Only with such a view of labor and the natural division of 


999 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


labor resulting from it, will tbe curse disappear which we 
in our imagination have put upon labor; and every labor will 
always be a joy, because man will do either an unquestion¬ 
ably useful, pleasant, and easy work, or will be conscious 
that he makes a sacrifice in performing a more difficult spe¬ 
cial labor for the good of others. 

But the division of labor is, it is said, more advantageous. 
Advantageous for whom ? Is it more advantageous to make 
as quickly as possible as many boots and cotton-prints as 
possible? But who will make these boots and cotton-prints? 
Men who from generation to generation have been making 
only pin-heads? How, then, can it be more advantageous for 
people? If the question were to make as many cotton-prints 
and pins as possible, it would be so; but the question is, 
how to make people happy ? 

The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in 
labor. 

How, then, can the necessity of a painful, oppressing work 
be advantageous for men? If the question were only for 
the advantage of some men without any consideration of the 
welfare of all, then it would be most advantageous for some 
men to eat others. 

The thing most advantageous for all men is that which I 
wish for myself, — the greatest welfare and the satisfying of 
all my wants, those of body as well as those of soul, of con¬ 
science, and of reason, which are ingrafted in me. 

And now, for myself I have found, that for my welfare 
and for the satisfying of these wants, I need only to be cured 
of the folly in which I, as well as the Ivrapivensky madman, 
have lived, which consisted in the idea that gentlefolk need 
not work, and that all must be done for them by others, and 
that, producing nothing, I have to do only what is proper to 
man, —satisfy my own wants. 

And having discovered this, I became persuaded that this 
labor for the satisfying of my own wants, is divisible into 
various kinds of labor, each of which has its own charm, 
and is not only not a burden, but serves as rest after some 
other. 

I have divided my labor into four parts parallel to the four 
parts of the laborer’s day’s work, which are divided by his 
meals; and thus I try to satisfy my wants. 

These are, then, the answers to the question, “ What is to 
be done? ” which I have found for myself. 


WTIAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


223 


First , To avoid deceiving myself. However far I have 
gone astray from that road of life which my reason shows to 
me, I must not be afraid of the truth. 

Secondly , To renounce my own righteousness, my own 
advantages, peculiarities, distinguishing me from others, and 
to confess the guilt of such. 

Thirdly , To fulfil that eternal, unquestionable law of man, 
— by laboring with all my being to struggle with nature, to 
sustain my own life, and the lives of others. 


XXXIX. 

I have now finished, having said all that concerns myself; 
but I cannot restrain my desire to say that which concerns 
every one, and to verify b} T several considerations my own 
deductions. 

I wish to explain why it is I think that a great many of 
my own class must arrive where I myself am, and I must 
also speak of what will result if even some few men arrive 
there; and in the first place, if only men of our circle, our 
caste, will seriously think the matter out themselves, the 
younger generation, who seek their own personal happiness, 
will become afraid of the ever-increasing misery of lives 
which obviously lead them to ruin ; scrupulous persons 
among us (if they would examine themselves more closely) 
will be terrified at the cruelty and unlawfulness of their own 
lives, and timid persons will be frightened at the danger of 
their mode of life. 

The misery of our lives! However we, rich men, may try 
to mend and to support, with the assistance of our science 
and art, this our false life, it must become weaker every 
day, unhealthier, and more and more painful: with each year 
suicide, and the sin against the unborn babe, increase; with 
each year the new generations of our class grow weaker, 
with each year we more and more feel the increasing dulness 
of our lives. 

It is obvious that on this road, with an increase of the 
comforts and delights of life, of cures, artificial teeth and 
hair, and so on, there can be no salvation. 

This truth has become such a truism, that in newspapers 
advertisements are printed about stomach powder for rich 
people, under the title “ Blessings of the poor,” where they 


224 


WUAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


say that only poor people have a good digestion, and the 
rich need help, and among other things this powder. You 
cannot ameliorate this matter by any kind of amusements, 
comforts, powders, but only by turning over a new leaf. 

Our lives are in contradiction to our consciences. However 
much we may try to justify to ourselves our treason against 
mankind, all our justification falls to pieces before evidence : 
around us, people are dying from overwork and want; and 
we destroy the food, clothes, labor of men merely in order 
to amuse ourselves. And therefore the conscience of a man 
of our circle, though he may have but a small remainder of 
it in his breast, cannot be stifled, and poisons all these com¬ 
forts and charms of life which our suffering and perishing 
brethren procure ’for us. But not only does every scrupu¬ 
lous man feel this himself, but he must feel it more acutelj’ 
at present, because the best part of art and science, that 
part in which there still remains a sense of its high calling, 
constantly reminds him of his cruelty, and the unlawfulness 
of his position. 

The old secure justifications are all destroyed; and the 
new ephemeral justifications of the progress of science for 
science’s sake, and art for art’s sake, will not bear the light 
of plain common sense. 

The conscience of men cannot be calmed b}’ new ideas: 
it can be calmed only by turning over a new leaf, when 
there will no longer be any necessity for justification. 

The danger to our lives! However much we may try to 
hide from ourselves the plain and most obvious danger of 
exhausting the patience of those men whom we oppress; 
however much we ma} T try to counteract this danger by all 
sorts of deceit, violence and flattery, —it is still growing with 
each day, with each hour, and it has long been threatening 
us, but now it is so ripe that w r e are scarcely able to hold 
our course in a vessel tossed by a roaring and overflowing 
sea, — a sea which will presently swallow us up in wrath. 

The workman’s revolution, with the terrors of destruction 
and murder, not only threatens us, but we have been already 
living upon its verge during the last thirty years, and it is 
only by various cunning devices that we have been postpon¬ 
ing the crisis. 

Such is the state in Europe: such is the state in Russia, 
because we have no safety-valves. The classes who oppress 
the people, with the exception of the Tsar, have no longer 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


225 


in the eyes of our people any justification ; they all keep up 
their position merely by violence, cunning, and expediency ; 
but the hatred towards us of the worst representatives of 
the people, and the contempt of us from the best, is increas¬ 
ing with every hour. 

Among the Russian people during the last three or four 
years, a new word full of significance has been circulating: 
by this word, which I never heard before, people are swear¬ 
ing in the streets, and calling us parasites. 

The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are 
increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer 
classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this 
is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith 
to comfort themselves. To return to the old order of things 
is impossible: one tiling only remains for those who are 
not willing to change the course of their lives, and to turn 
over a new leaf, — to hope that, during their lives, they will 
fare well enough, after which the people may do as they 
like. So think the blind crowd of the rich ; but the danger 
is ever increasing, and the awful catastrophe is coming nearer 
and nearer. 

There are three reasons which prove to rich people the 
necessity of turning over a new leaf: First, the desire for 
their own personal welfare and that of their families, which 
is not secured by the way in which rich people are living; 
secondly, the inability to satisfy the voice of conscience, 
which is obviously impossible in the present condition of 
things ; and thirdly, the threatening and constantly increas¬ 
ing danger to life, which cannot be met by any outw T ard 
means. All these together ought to induce rich people to 
change their mode of life. This change alone would satisfy 
the desire of welfare and conscience, and would remove the 
danger. And there is but one means of making such change, 
— to leave off deceiving ourselves, to repent, and to acknowl¬ 
edge labor to be, not a curse, but the joyful business of life. 

To this it is replied, “What will come from the fact of 
my physical labor during ten, eight, or five hours, which 
thousands of peasants would gladly do for the money which 
I have?” 

The first good would be, that you will become livelier, 
healthier, sounder, kinder; and you will learn that real life 
from which you have been hiding yourself, or which was 
hidden from you. 


226 


WHAT MUST WE 1)0 THENf 


The second good will be, that, if you have a conscience, 
it will not only not suffer as it suffers now looking at the 
labor of men, the importance of which we always, from our 
ignorance, either increase or diminish, but you will constantly 
experience a joyful acknowledgment that with each day 
you are more and more satisfying the demands of your con¬ 
science, and ’are leaving behind you that awful state in 
which so much evil is accumulated in our lives that we feel 
that we cannot possibly do any good in the world; you will 
experience the joy of free life, with the possibility of doing- 
good to others ; 3 011 will open for 3 T ourself a way into the 
regions of the world of nlorality which has hitherto been 
shut to you. 

The third good will be this, that, instead of constant fear 
of revenge for your evil deeds, you will feel that you are 
saving others from this revenge, and are principally saving 
the oppressed from the cruel feeling of rancor and resent¬ 
ment. 

But it is usually said, that it would be ridiculous if w r e, 
men of our stamp, with deep philosophical, scientific, politi¬ 
cal, artistic, ecclesiastical, social questions before us, we 
state ministers, senators, academists, professors, artists, 
singers, we whose quarter-hours are valued so highly by men, 
should spend our time in doing — what? Cleaning our boots, 
washing our shirts, digging, planting potatoes, or feeding 
our chickens and cows, and so on, — in such business which 
not onl} 7 our house-porter, our cook, but thousands of men 
besides who value our time, would be very glad to do for us. 

But why do we dress, wash, and comb our hair ourselves? 
Why do we walk, hand chairs to ladies, to our guests, open 
and shut the door, help people into carriages, and perform 
hnndreds of such actions which were formerty performed for 
us by our slaves? 

Because we consider that such may be done by ourselves ; 
that it is compatible with human dignity; that is, human 
duty. The same holds good with physical labor. Man’s 
dignity, his sacred duty, is to use his hands, his feet, for that 
purpose for which they were given him, and not to be wasted 
by disuse, not that he may wash and clean them and use 
them only for the purpose of stuffing food and cigarettes 
into his mouth. 

Such is the meaning of physical labor for every man in 
ever} 7 society. But in our class, with the divergence from 


WHAT MUST WE DO THENt 


227 


this law of nature came the misery of a whole circle of men ; 
and for us, physical labor receives another meaning, — the 
meaning of a preaching and a propaganda which divert the 
terrible evil which threatens mankind. 

To say that for an educated man, physical labor is a use¬ 
less occupation, is the same as to say, in the building of a 
temple, What importance can there be in putting each stone 
exactly in its place? Every great act is done under the 
conditions of imperceptibility, modesty, and simplicity. One 
can neither plough, nor feed cattle, nor think, during a great 
illumination, or thundering of guns, or while in uniform. 

Illumination, the roar of cannon, music, uniforms, clean¬ 
liness, brilliancy, which w r e usually connect with the idea of 
the importance of any act, are, on the contrary, tokens of 
the absence of importance in the same. Great, true deeds 
are always simple and modest. And such is also the 
greatest deed which is left to us to do, — the solution of 
those awful contradictions in which we are living. And the 
acts which solve those contradictions are those modest, im¬ 
perceptible, seemingly ridiculous acts, such as helping our¬ 
selves by physical labor, and, if possible, helping others 
too: this is what we rich people have to do, if we under¬ 
stand the miseiy, wrong, and danger of the position in which 
we are living. 

What will-come out of the circumstance that I, and another, 
and a third, and a tenth man, do not despise ph} 7 sical labor, 
but consider it necessary for our happiness, for the calming 
of our consciences, and for our safety? This will come of 
it, — that.one, two, three, ten men, coming into conflict with 
no one, without the violence either of the government or of 
revolution, will solve for themselves the problem w r hich is 
before all the world, and which lias appeared insolvable ; and 
they will solve it in such a way that life will become for them 
a good thing: their consciences will be calm, and the evil 
which oppresses them will cease to be dreadful to them. 

Another effect will be this: that other men, too, will see 
that the welfare, which they have been looking for every¬ 
where, is quite close by them, that seeming^ insolvable con¬ 
tradictions of conscience and the order of the world are 
solved in the easiest and pleasantest way, and that, instead 
of being afraid of men surrounding them, they must have 
intercourse with them, and love them. 

The seemingly insolvable economical and social questions 


228 


WHAT MUST WE BO THENf 


are like the problem of Krilof’s casket. The casket opened 
of itself, without any difficulty: but it will not open until 
men do the very simplest and most natural thing; that is, 
open it. The seemingly insolvable question is the old question 
of utilizing some men’s labor by others: this question, in 
our time, has found its expression in property. 

Formerly, other men’s labor was used simply by violence, 
by slavery : in our time, it is being done b}' the means of 
property. In our time, property is the root of all evil and 
of the sufferings of men who possess it, or are without it, 
and of all the remorse of conscience of those who misuse it, 
and of the danger from the collision between those who have 
it, and those who have it not. 

Property is the root of all evil; and, at the same time, 
property is that towards which all the activity of our modern 
society is directed, and that which directs the activity of the 
world. States and governments intrigue, make wars, for 
the sake of property, for the possession of the banks of the 
Rhine, of land in Africa, China, the Balkan Peninsula. 
Bankers, merchants, manufacturers, land-owners, labor, use 
cunning, torment themselves, torment others, for the sake of 
property ; government functionaries, tradesmen, landlords, 
struggle, deceive, oppress, suffer, for the sake of property; 
courts of justice and police protect property; penal servi¬ 
tude, prisons, all the terrors of so-called punishments, — 
all is done for the sake of property. 

Property is the root of all evil; and now all the world is 
busy with the distribution and protecting of wealth. 

What, then, is property? Men are accustomed to think 
that property is something really belonging to man, and for 
this reason they have called it property. We speak indis¬ 
criminately of our own house and our own land. But this 
is obviously an error and a superstition. We know, and if 
we do not, it is easy to perceive, that property is only the 
means of utilizing other men’s labor. And another’s labor 
can by no means belong to me. 

Man has been always calling his own that which is subject 
to his own will and joined with his own consciousness. As 
soon as man calls his own something which is not his body, 
but which he should like to be subject to his will as his body 
is, then he makes a mistake, and gets disappointment, suffer¬ 
ing, and compels other people to suffer as well. Man calls 
his wife his own, his children, his slaves, his belongings, his 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN t 


229 


Own too ; but the reality alwa3’s shows him his error: and he 
must either get rid of this superstition, or suffer, and make 
others suffer. 

Now we, having nominally renounced the possessing of 
slaves, owing to money (and to its exactment by the govern¬ 
ment), claim our right also to money ; that is, to the labor of 
other men. 

But as to our claiming our wives as our property, or our 
sons, our slaves, our horses, — this is pure fiction contradicted 
by reality, and which only makes those suffer who believe in 
it; because a wife or a son will never be so subject to my will 
as my body is ; therefore m} T own bod} r will always remain 
the only thing I can call my true property ; so also money, — 
property will never be real property, but only a deception and 
a source of suffering, and it is only my own body which will 
be my property, that which always obeys me, and is connected 
with my consciousness. 

It is only to us, who are so accustomed to call other things 
than our body our own, that such a wild superstition ma} T ap¬ 
pear useful for us, and be without evil results ; but we have 
only to reflect upon the nature of the matter in order to see 
how this, like every other superstition, brings with it only 
dreadful consequences. 

Let us take the most simple example. I consider myself 
my own, and another man like myself I consider m3’ own too. 
I must understand how to cook my dinner: if I were free 
from the superstition of considering another man as my prop¬ 
erty, I should have been taught this art as well as every other 
necessary to my real property (that is, my body) ; but now 
I have it taught to my imaginary property, and the result is 
that my cook does not obey me, does not wish to humor me, 
and even runs away from me, or dies, and I remain with an 
unsatisfied want, and have lost the habit of learning, and 
recognize that I have spent as much time in cares about this 
cook as I should have spent in learning the art of cooking 
myself. 

The same is the case with the property of buildings, clothes, 
wares; with the property of the land; with the property of 
money. Every imaginary property calls forth in me a non¬ 
corresponding want which cannot always be gratified, and 
deprives me of the possibility of acquiring for my true and 
sure property — my own body — that information, that skill, 
those habits, improvements, which J might have acquired. 


230 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


The result is always that I have spent (without gain to 
myself, — to my true property) strength, sometimes my 
whole life, on that which never has been, and never could 
be, my property. 

I provide myself with an imaginary “private” library, a 
“private” picture-gallery, “private” apartments, clothes; 
acquire my “ own ” money in order to purchase with it every 
thing I want, and the matter stands thus, — that I, being 
busy about this imaginary property, as if it were real, leave 
quite out of sight that which is my true property, upon which 
I may really labor, and which really may serve me, and 
which always remains in my power. 

Words have always a definite meaning until we purposely 
give them a false signification. 

What does property mean? 

Property means that which is given to me alope, which 
belongs to me alone, exclusively; that with which I may 
always do every thing I like, which nobody can take away 
from me, which remains mine to the end of my life, and that 
I ought to use in order to increase and to improve it. Such 
property for eveiy man is only himself. 

And it is in this very sense that imaginary property is un¬ 
derstood, that very property for the sake of which (in order 
to make it impossible for this imaginary property to become 
areal one) all the sufferings of this world exist, — wars, 
executions, judgments, prisons, luxury, depravity, murders, 
and the ruin of mankind. 

What, then, will come out of the circumstance that ten men 
plough, hew wood, make boots, not from want, but from the 
acknowledgment that man needs work, and that the more he 
works, the better it will be for him? 

This will come out of it: that ten men, or even one single 
man, in thought and in deed, will show men that this fearful 
evil from which they are suffering, is not the law of their 
destiny, nor the will of God, nor any historical necessity, but 
a superstition not at all a strong or overpowering one, but 
weak and null, in which it is only necessary to leave off be¬ 
lieving, as in idols, in order to get rid of it, and to destroy it 
as a frail cobweb is swept away. 

Men who begin to work in order to fulfil the pleasant law 
of their lives, who work for the fulfilment of the law of labor, 
will free themselves from the superstition of property which 
is so full of misery, and then all these worldly establishments 


WHAT MUST WE HO THEN f 


231 


which exist in order to protect this imaginary property out¬ 
side of one’s own body, will become not oul}* unnecessary 
for them, but burdensome ; and it will become plain to all 
that these institutions are not necessary, but pernicious, 
imaginary, and false conditions of life. 

Fora man who considers labor not a curse, but a joy, prop¬ 
erty outside his own body — that is, the right or possibility 
of utilizing other men’s labor — will be not only useless, but 
an impediment. If I am fond of cookiug my dinner, and 
accustomed to do it, then the fact that another man will 
do it for me, will deprive me of my usual business, and 
will not satisfy me as well as I have satisfied myself; be¬ 
sides, the acquirement of an imaginary property will not 
be necessary for such a man : a man who considers labor 
to be his very life, fills up with it all his life, and there¬ 
fore requires less and less the labor of others, — in other 
words, property in order to fill up his unoccupied time, and 
to embellish his life. 

If the life of a mau is occupied by labor, he does not 
require many rooms, much furniture, various fine clothes: 
he does not require expensive food, carriages, amusements. 
But particularly a man who considers labor to be the busi¬ 
ness and the joy of his life, will not seek to ease his own 
labor by utilizing that of others. 

A man who considers life to consist in labor, in propor¬ 
tion as he acquires more skill, craft, and endurance, will aim 
at having more and more work to do, which should occupy 
all his time. For such a man, who sees the object of his 
life in labor, and not in the results of this labor for the 
acquirement of property, there cannot be evefi a question 
about the instruments of labor. Though such a man will 
always choose the most productive instrument of labor, 
he will have the same satisfaction in working with the most 
unproductive. 

If he has a steam-plough, he will plough with it; if he 
has not such, he will plough with a horse-plough ; if he has 
not this, he will plough with the plain Russian sokha; if 
he has not even this, he will use a spade : and under any 
circumstances, he will attain his aim; that is, will pass his 
life in a labor useful to man, and therefore he will have 
fullest satisfaction : arid the position of such a man, accord¬ 
ing to exterior and interior circumstances, will be happier 
than the condition of a man who gives his life away to 
acquire property. 


232 


WHAT MV ST WE DO THENf 


According to exterior circumstances, he will never want, 
m because men, seeing that he does not mind w'ork, will alwaj T s 
try to make his labor most productive to them, as they 
arrange a mill by running water; and in order that his 
labor might be more productive, they will provide for his 
material existence, which thej' will never do for men who 
aim at acquiring propert} 7 . 

And the providing for material wants, is all that a man 
requires. According to interior conditions, such a man will 
be always happier than he who seeks for property, because 
the latter will never receive what he is aiming at, and the 
former always in proportion to his strength : even the weak, 
old, dying (according to the proverb, with a Kored in his 
hands), will receive full satisfaction, and the love and sym¬ 
pathy of men. 

One of the consequences of this will be, that some odd, 
half-insane persons will plough, make boots, and so on, 
instead of smoking, playing cards, and riding about, carry¬ 
ing with them, from one place to another, their dulness 
during the ten hours which every man of letters has at his 
command. 

Another result will be, that those silly people will demon¬ 
strate in deed, that that imaginary property for the sake of 
which men suffer, torment themselves and others, is not 
necessary for happiness, and even impedes it, and is only 
a superstition ; and that true property is only one’s own 
head, hands, feet; and that, in order to utilize this true 
property usefully and joyfully, it is necessary to get rid of 
the false idea of property outside one’s own body, on which 
we waste the best powers of our life. 

Another result will be, that these men will show, that, 
when a man leaves off believing in imaginary property, 
then only will he make real use of his true property, — his 
own body, which will yield him fruit an hundred-fold, and 
such happiness of which we have no idea as yet; and he 
will be a useful, strong, kind man, who will everywhere 
stand on his own feet, will always be a brother to every¬ 
body, will be intelligible to all, desired by all, and dear 
to all. 

And men, looking at one, at ten such, silly men will 
understand what they have all to do in order to undo that 
dreadful knot in which they have all been tied by the super¬ 
stition respecting property, in order to get rid of the miser- 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN1 233 

able condition from which they are groaning now, and from 
which they do not know how to free themselves. 

But what can a man do in a crowd who do not agree with 
him? There is no reasoning which could more obviously 
demonstrate the unrighteousness of those who employ it as 
does this. The boatmen are dragging vessels against the 
stream. Is it possible that there could be found such a 
stupid boatman who would refuse to do his part in drag¬ 
ging, because he alone cannot drag the boat up against the 
stream? He who, besides his rights of animal life, — to 
eat and to sleep, — acknowledges any human duty, knows 
very well wherein such duty consists : just in the same way 
as a boatman knows that he has only to get into his breast- 
collar, and to walk in the given direction, to find out what he 
has to do, and how to do it. 

And so with the boatmen, and with all men who do any 
labor in common, so with the labor of all mankind; each 
man need only keep on his breast-collar, and go in the given 
direction. And for this purpose one and the same reason 
is given to all men that this direction may always be the 
same. 

And that this direction is given to us, is obvious and cer¬ 
tain from the lives of all those who surround us, as well as in 
the conscience of every man, and in all the previous expres¬ 
sions of human wisdom ; so that only he who does not want 
work, may say that he does not see it. 

What will, then, come out of this? 

This, that first one man, then another, will drag ; looking 
at them, a third will join ; and so one by one the best men 
will join, until the business will be set a-going, and will 
move as of itself, inducing those also to join who do not 
yet understand why and wherefore it is being done. 

First, to the number of men who conscientiously work in 
order to fulfil the law of God, will be added those who will 
accept half conscientiously and half upon faith ; then to these 
a still greater number of men, only upon the faith in the fore¬ 
most men ; and lastly the majority of people : and then it will 
come to pass that men will cease to ruin themselves, and 
will find out happiness. 

This will happen soon when men of our circle, and after 
them all the great majority of working-people, will no longer 
consider it shameful to clean sewers, but will consider it 
shameful to fill them up in order that other men, our brethren , 


234 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


may carry their contents away; they will not consider it 
shameful to go visiting in common boots, but they will con¬ 
sider it shameful to walk in goloshes by barefooted people ; 
they will not think it shameful not to know French, or about 
the last novel, but they will consider it shameful to eat bread, 
and not to know how it is prepared; they will not consider 
it shameful not to have a starched shirt or a clean dress, but 
that it is shameful to wear a clean coat as a token of one’s 
idleness ; they will not consider it shameful to have dirty 
hands, but not to have callouses on their hands. 

Within my memory, still more striking changes have taken 
place. I remember that at table, behind each chair, a ser¬ 
vant stood with a plate. Men made visits accompanied by 
two footmen. A Cossack bo}' and a girl stood in a room to 
give people their pipes, and to clean them, and so on. Now 
this seems to us strange and remarkable. But is it not 
equally strange that a young man or woman, or even an 
elderly man, in order to visit a friend, should order his horses 
to be harnessed, and that well-fed horses are only kept for 
this purpose? Is it not as strange that one man lives in five 
rooms, or that a woman spends tens, hundreds, thousands of 
rubles for her dress when she only needs some flax and wool 
in order to spin dresses for herself, and clothes for her hus¬ 
band and children? 

Is it not strange that men live doing nothing, riding to and 
fro, smoking and playing, and that a battalion of people are 
busy feeding and warming them ? 

Is it not strange that old people quite gravely talk and 
write in newspapers about theatres, music, and other insane 
people drive to look at musicians or actors? 

Is it not strange that tens of thousands of boys and girls 
are brought up so as to make them unfit for every work 
(they return home from school, and their two books are 
carried for them by a servant) ? 

There will soon come a time, and it is already drawing near, 
when it will be shameful to dine on five courses served by 
footmen, and cooked by any but the masters themselves; it 
will be shameful not only to ride thoroughbreds or in a coach 
when one has feet to walk on; to wear on week-days such 
dress, shoes, gloves, in which it is impossible to work; it 
will be shameful to play on a piano which costs one hundred 
and fifty pounds, or even ten pounds, while others work for 
one ; to feed dogs upon milk and white bread, and to burn 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN / 


235 


lamps and candles without working by their light; to heat 
stoves in which the meal is not cooked. Then it would be 
impossible to think about giving openl} r not merely one 
pound, but six pence, for a place in a concert or in a theatre. 
All this will be when the law of labor becomes public opinion. 


XL. 

As it is said in the Bible, there is a law given unto man 
and woman, — to man, the law of labor; to woman, the 
law of child-bearing. Although with our science, ^ nous 
avons change tout fa,” the law of man as well as of woman 
remains as immutable as the liver in its place ; and the breach 
of it is as inevitably punished by death. The only difference 
is, that for man, the breach of law is punished by death in 
such a near future that it can almost be called present; 
but for woman, the breach of law is punished in a more 
distant future. 

A general breach, by all men, of the law, destroys men 
immediately : the breach by women destroys the men of the 
following generation. The evasion of the law by a few 
men and women does not destroy the human race, but de¬ 
prives the offender of rational human nature. 

The breach of this law by men began years ago in the 
classes which could use violence with others ; and, spreading 
on its way, it has reached our day, and has now attained 
madness, the ideal contained in a breach of the law, the 
ideal expressed by Prince Blokhin, and shared by Renan 
and the whole educated world: work will be done by 
machines, and men will be bundles of nerves enjoying them¬ 
selves. 

There has been scarcely any breach of the law by women. 
It has only manifested itself in prostitution, and in private 
cases of crime in destroying progeny. Women of the 
wealthy classes have fulfilled their law, while men did not 
fulfil theirs ; and therefore women have grown stronger, and 
have continued to govern, and will govern, men, who have 
deviated from their law, and who, consequently, have lost 
their reason. It is generally said that women (the women of 
Paris, especially those who are childless) have become so 
bewitching, using all the means of civilization, that they have 
mastered man by their charms. 


236 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


This is not only wrong, but it is just the reverse of the 
truth. It is not the childless woman who has mastered man, 
but it is the mother, the one who has fulfilled her duty, while 
man has not fulfilled his. 

As to the woman who artificially remains childless, and 
bewitches man by her shoulders and curls, she is not a 
woman, mastering man, but a woman corrupted by him, 
reduced to his level, to the corrupted man, and who, as well 
as he, has deviated from her duty, and who, as well as he, 
has lost every reasonable sense of life. 

This mistake produces also the astounding nonsense which 
is called “ woman’s rights.” The formula of these rights 
is as follows : — 

“ You men,” says woman, “ have deviated from your law 
of true labor, and want us to carry the load of ours. No: 
if so, w r e also, as well as you, will make a pretence of labor, 
as you do in banks, ministries, universities, and academies ; 
we wish, as well as you, by the pretence of division of 
work, to profit by other people’s work, and to live, only to 
satisfy our lust.” They sa} 7 so, and in deed show that they 
can make that pretence of labor, not at all worse, but even 
better, than men do it. 

The so-called question of woman’s rights arose, and only 
could arise, among men who had deviated from the law of 
real labor. One has only to return to it, and that question 
must cease to exist. A woman who has her own particular, 
inevitable labor will never claim the right of sharing man’s 
labor, — in mines, or in ploughing fields. She claims a 
share only in the sham labor of the wealthy classes. 

The woman of our class was stronger than man, and is 
now still stronger, not through her charms, not through her 
skill in performing the same pharisaic similitude of work as 
man, but because she has not stepped outside of the law ; 
because she has borne that true labor with danger of life, 
with uttermost effort; true labor, from which the man of the 
wealthy classes has freed himself. 

But within my memory has begun also the deviation from 
the law by woman, — that is to sa}’, her fall; and within my 
memory, it has proceeded farther and farther. A woman 
who has lost the law, believes that her power consists in the 
charms of her witchery, or in her skill at a pharisaic pre¬ 
tence of intellectual labor. But children hinder the one and 
the other. Therefore, with the help of science, within my 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


237 


memory it has come to pass that among the wealthy classes, 
scores of means of destroying progeny have appeared. 
And behold,—women, mothers, some of them of the wealthy 
classes, who held their power in their hands, let it slip away, 
only to place themselves on a level with women of the street. 
The evil has spread far, and spreads farther every day, and 
will soon grasp all the women of the wealthy classes ; and 
then they will become even with men, and together with 
them will lose every reasonable sense of life. But there is 
yet time. 

If only women would understand their worth, their power, 
and would use them for the work of salvation of their 
husbands, brothers, and children ! the salvation of all men ! 

Women, mothers of the wealthy classes, the salvation of 
men of our world from the evils from which it suffers, is in 
your hands ! 

Not those women who are occupied by their figures, 
bustles, head-dresses, and their charms for men, and who, 
contrary to their will, by oversight and with despair, bear 
children, and then give their children to wet-nurses; nor yet 
those who go to different lectures, and talk of psychometrical 
centres and differentiation, and who also try to free them¬ 
selves from bearing children in order not to hinder their folly, 
which they call development, — but those women and 
mothers who, having the power of freeing themselves from 
child-bearing, hold strictly and consciously to that eternal, 
immutable law, knowing that the weight and labor of that 
submission'is the aim of their life. These women and 
mothers of our wealthy classes are those in whose hands, 
more than in any others, lies the salvation of the men of our 
sphere in*life, from the calamities which oppress them. 

You women and mothers who submit consciously to the 
law of God, you are the only ones who, in our miserable, 
mutilated world, which has lost all semblance of humanity, 
you are the only ones who know the whole true meaning of 
life according to the law of God ; and you are the only ones 
who, by your example, can show men the happiness of that 
submission to God’s law, of which they rob themselves. 

You are the only ones who know the joy and happiness 
which takes possession of one’s whole being ; the bliss which 
is the share of every man who does not deviate from God’s 
law. You know the Joy of love to your husband, — a joy 
never ending, never destroyed, like all other joys, but form- 


238 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN f 


ing the beginning of another new joy — love to your child. 
You are the only ones, when you are simple and submissive 
to God’s law, who know, not the farcical pretence of labor, 
which men of your world call labor, but that true labor which 
is imposed by God upon men, and know the rewards for it,— 
the bliss which it gives. 

You know it when, after the joys of love, you expect with 
emotion, fear, and hope, the torturing state of pregnancy, 
which makes you ill for nine months, and brings you to the 
brink of death and to unbearable sufferings and pains : you 
know the conditions of true labor, when with joy you expect 
the approach and increase of the most dreadful sufferings, 
after which comes the bliss, known to you only. 

You know it when, directly after those sufferings, without 
rest, without interruption, you undertake another series of 
labors and sufferings, — those of nursiug; for the sake of 
which you subjugate to your feeling, and renounce, the strong¬ 
est human necessity, — that of sleep, which, according to the 
saying, is sweeter than father and mother. And for months 
and years you do not sleep two nights running, and often you 
do not sleep whole nights ; walking alone to and fro, rocking 
in your wearied arms an ailing baby, whose sufferings tear 
your heart. And when you do all this, unapproved and unseen 
by anybody, not expecting any praise or reward for it; when 
you do this, not as a great deed, but as the laborer of the gos¬ 
pel parable, who came from the field, considering that you are 
only doing your duty, —j r ou know then what is false, fictitious 
labor, — for human fame ; and what is true labor, — the fulfil¬ 
ment of God’s will, the indication of which you feel in your 
heart. You know, if you are a true mother, that not only 
nobody has seen and praised your labor, considering that it is 
only what ought to be, but even those for whom you toiled are 
not only ungrateful to you, but often torment and reproach 
you. And with the next child you do the same, — again you 
suffer, again you bear unseen, terrible toil, and again you do 
not expect any reward from anybody, and feel the same 
satisfaction. 

If you are such, you will not say, after two or after twenty 
children, that you have borne children enough; as a fifty- 
year-old workman will not say that he has worked enough, 
when he still eats and sleeps, and his muscles demand work. 
If you are such, you will not cast the trouble of nursing and 
care on a strange mother, any more than a workman will give 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


289 


the work which he has begun, and nearly finished, to another 
man, because in that work you put your life, and because, the 
more you have of that work, the fuller and happier is your 
life. 

But when you are like this, — and there are yet such women, 
happily for men, —the same law of fulfilment of God’s will, 
by which you guide your own life, }'ou will apply also to the 
life of your husband, of your children, and of men near to 
you. If you are such, and if you know by experience that 
only self-denied, unseen, unrewarded labor with danger of 
life, and uttermost effort for the life of others, is that mission 
of man which gives satisfaction, you will claim the same 
from others, you will encourage your husband to do the 
same labor, you will value and appreciate the worth of men 
by this same labor, and for it you will prepare your children. 

Only that mother who looks on child-bearing as a dis¬ 
agreeable accident, and upon the pleasures of love, comfort, 
education, sociabilit}’, as the sense of life, will bring up her 
children so that they shall have as many pleasures, and enjoy 
them as much, as possible; will feed them luxuriously, dress 
them smartly, will artificially divert them, and will teach them, 
not that which will make them capable of self-sacrificing 
man’s and woman’s labor with danger of life and uttermost 
effort, but that which will deliver them from that labor. 
Only such a woman, who has lost the sense of her life, will 
sympathize with that false, sham man’s labor, by means of 
which her husband, freeing himself from man’s duty, has the 
possibility Of profiting, together with her, by the labor of 
others. Only such a woman will choose a similar husband 
for her daughter, and value men, not by what they are in 
themselves, "but by what is attached to them, — position, 
money, the art of profiting by the labor of others. 

A true mother, who really knows God’s law, will prepare 
her children for the fulfilment of it. For such a mother to 
see her child overfed, delicate, overdressed, will be a suffer¬ 
ing, because all this, she knows, will hinder it in the fulfilment 
of God’s law, experienced by herself. Such "a woman will 
not teach that which will give her son or daughter the possi¬ 
bility of delivering themselves from labor, but that which 
will help them to bear the labor of life. 

She will not want to ask what to teach her children, or for 
what to prepare them, knowing what it is and in what con¬ 
sists the mission of men, and consequently knowing what 


240 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN? 


to teaclf her children, and for what to prepare them. Such 
a woman will not only discourage her husband from false, 
sham labor, the only aim of which is to profit b} r other 
people’s work, but will view with disgust and dread an 
activity that will serve as a double temptation for her chil¬ 
dren. Such a woman will not choose her daughter’s husband 
according to the whiteness of his hands, and the refinement 
of his manners, but, knowing thoroughly what is labor and 
what deceit, will always and everywhere, beginning with her 
husband, respect and appreciate men, will claim from them 
true labor with waste and danger of life, and will scorn that 
false, sham labor which has for its aim the delivering of 
one’s self from true labor. 

Such a mother will bring forth and nurse her children her - 
self and, above all things else, will feed and provide for 
them, will work for them, wash and teach them, will sleep 
and talk with them, because she makes that her life-work. 
Only such a mother will not seek for her children external secu¬ 
rity through her husband’s money, or her children’s diplomas, 
but she will exercise in them the same capacity of self-sac¬ 
rificing fulfilment of God’s will which she knows in herself, 
the capacity for bearing labor with waste and danger of life, 
because she knows that only in that lie the security and wel¬ 
fare of life. Such a mother will not have to ask others what 
is her duty: she will know every thing beforehand, and will 
fear nothing. 

If there can be doubts for a man or for a childless woman 
about the way to fulfil God’s will, for a mother that way 
is firmly and clearly drawn ; and if she fulfils it humbly, with 
a simple heart, standing on the highest point of good, which 
it is only given to a human beiug to attain, she becomes the 
guiding-star for all men, tending to the same good. Only a 
mother before her death can sa} r to Him who sent her into 
this world, and to Him whom she has served by bearing and 
bringing up children, beloved by her more than herself,— 
only she can peacefully say, after having served Him in her 
appointed service, — 

‘“Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’ ” 

And this is that highest perfection, to which, as to the 
highest good, men aspire. 

Such women, who fulfil their mission, are those who reign 
over reigning men; those who prepare new generations of 


WHAT MUST WE DO THEN? 


241 


men, and form public opinion : and therefore in the hands of 
these women lies the highest power of men’s salvation from 
the existing and threatening evils of our time. 

Yes, women, mothers, in your hands, more than in those 
of any others, lies the salvation of the world! 


242 


WHAT MUST WE j DO THEN f 


NOTE TO CHAPTER XL. 

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people. 
With this general proposition, I think all who are not immoral 
people will agree. The difference between men and women in the 
fulfilment of that vocation, is only in the means by which they 
attain it; that is to say, by which they serve men. 

Man serves others by physical work, — procuring food; by intel¬ 
lectual work, — studying the laws of nature in order to master it; 
and by social work, — instituting forms of life, and establishing 
mutual relations between people. 

The means of serving others are various for men. The whole 
activity of mankind, with the exception of bearing children and 
rearing them, is open for his service to men. A woman, in addition 
to the possibility of serving men by all the means open to'man, by 
the construction of her body is called, and is inevitably attracted, 
to serve others by that which alone is excepted from the domain of 
the service of man. 

The service of mankind is divided into two parts, — one, the aug¬ 
mentation of the welfare of mankind; the other, the continuation 
of the race. Men are called chiefly to the first, as they are deprived 
of the possibility of fulfilling the second. Women are called 
exclusively to the second, as they only are fitted for it. This 
difference one should not, one can not, forget or destroy; and it 
would be sinful to do so. From this difference proceed the duties 
of each, — duties not invented by men, but which are in the nature 
of things. From the same difference proceeds the estimation of 
virtue and vice for woman and man,—the estimation which has 
existed in every century, which exists now, and which will never 
cease to exist while in men reason exists. 

It always has been, and it always will be, the case, that a man 
who spends a great part of his life in the various physical and 
mental labors which are natural to him, and a woman who spends 
a great part of her life in the labor of bearing, nursing, and rear¬ 
ing children, which is her exclusive prerogative, will equally feel 
that they are doing their duty, and will equally rise in the esteem 
and love of other people, because they both fulfil that which is 
appointed to them by their nature. 

The vocation of man is broader and more varied; the vocation 
of woman more uniform and narrower, but more profound: and 
therefore it has always been, and always will be, the case, that man, 
having hundreds of duties, will be neither a bad nor a pernicious 


WHAT MUST WE BO THEN f 


243 


man, even when he has been false to one or ten out of them, if 
he fulfils the greater part of his vocation ; while woman, as she has 
a smaller number of duties, if she is false to one of them, instantly 
falls lower than a man, who has been false to ten out of his 
hundreds of duties. Such has always been the general opinion, 
and such it will always remain, — because such is the substance of 
the matter. 

A man, in order to fulfil God’s will, must serve him in the 
domain of physical work, thought and morality: in all these ways 
he can fulfil his vocation. Woman’s service to God consists 
chiefly and almost exclusively in bearing children (because no one 
except herself can render it). Only by means of work, is man 
called to serve God and his fellow-men : only by means of her 
children, is a woman called to serve them. 

And therefore, love to her own children which is inborn in 
woman, that exclusive love against which it is quite vain to strive 
by reasoning, will always be, and ought to be, natural to a woman 
and a mother. That love to a child in its infancy is not egotism, 
but it is the love of a workman for the work which he is doing 
while it is in his hands. Take away that love for the object of 
one’s work, and the work becomes impossible. While I am making 
a boot, I love it above every thing. If I did not love it, I could 
not work at it. If anybody spoils it for me, I am in despair; but 
I only love it thus while I am working at it. When it is com¬ 
pleted, there remains an attachment, a preference, which is weak 
and illegitimate. 

It is the same with a mother. A man is called to serve others 
by multifarious labors, and he loves those labors while he is 
accomplishing them. A woman is called to serve others by her 
children, and she cannot help loving those children of hers while 
she is rearing them to the age of three, seven, or ten years. 

In the general vocation of serving God and others, man and 
woman are entirely equal, notwithstanding the difference of the 
form of that service. The equality consists in the equal impor¬ 
tance of one service and of the other, — that the one is impossible 
without the other, that the one depends upon the other, and that for 
efficient service, as well for man as for woman, the knowledge of 
truth is equally necessary. 

Without this knowledge, the activity of man and woman becomes 
not useful but pernicious for mankind. Man is called to fulfil his 
multifarious labor; but his labor is only useful, and his physical, 
mental, and social labor is only fruitful, when it is fulfilled in the 
name of truth and the welfare of others. 

A man can occupy himself as zealously as he will to increase his 
pleasures by vain reasoning and with social activity for his own 
advantage : his labor will not be fruitful. It will only be so when 
it is directed towards lessening the suffering of others from want 
and ignorance and from false social organization.. 

The same with woman’s vocation: her bearing, nursing, and 


244 


WHAT MUST WE HO THENf 


bringing up children will only be useful to mankind when she not 
only gives birth to children for her own pleasure, but when she 
prepares future servants of mankind ; when the education of those 
children is done in the name of truth and for the welfare of. 
others, — that is to say, when she will educate her children in such 
a manner that they shall be the very best men possible, and the 
very best laborers for others. 

The ideal woman, in my opinion, is the one who, appropriating 
the highest view of life of the time in which she lives, yet gives 
herself to her feminine mission, which is irresistibly placed in her, — 
that of bringing forth, nursing and educating, the greatest possible 
number of children, fitted to work for people according to the view 
which she has of life. 

But in order to appropriate the highest view of life, I think 
there is no need of visiting lectures : all that she requires is to read 
the gospel, and not to shut her eyes, ears, and, most of all, her 
heart. 

Well, and if you ask what those are to do who have no children, 
who are not married, or are widows, I answer that those will do 
well to share man’s multifarious labor. But one cannot help 
being sorry that such a precious tool as woman is, should be 
bereft of the possibility of fulfilling the great vocation which it is 
proper to her alone to fulfil. 

Especially as every woman, when she has finished bearing chil¬ 
dren, if she has strength left, will have the time to occupy herself 
with that help in man’s labor. Woman’s help in that labor is very 
precious; but it will always be a pity to see a young woman fit for 
child-bearing, and occupied by man’s labor. 

To see such a woman, is the same as to see precious vegetable 
soil covered with stones for a place of parade or for a walking- 
ground. Still more a pity, because this earth could only produce 
bread, and a woman could produce that for which there cannot be 
any equivalent, higher than which there is nothing, — man. And 
only she is able to do this. 


THE END. 


LATEST PUBLICATIONS. 


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£ 1 .75- 

Prof. Ely has w r ritten the first broad and critical treatise upon the manifold 
systems of taxation that obtain in our chief cities and States. It is a work 
of immense research and presents in a masterly manner the w T hole complex 
subject of taxation as well as the inconsistencies which prevail in parts of this 
country. The volume is made especially valuable by nujnerous and carefully 
compiled tables showing the various methods of levying taxes and the com¬ 
parative results in every State of the Union, and while it will not fail to 
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“One ot the best books of the year. 
Such a novel is something to be grateful 
for. It makes goodness interesting; it 
idealizes realism ; it shows love to be 
lovely and heroism possible.” 

— Critic, N. Y. 


MAXI MINA, 

By Don Armando Palacio Valdds. 

Author of “ The Marquis of Penalta.” 12mo, $1.50. 


This powerful and dramatic work describes life in 
Madrid at the time when the revolutionary fever was rife. 
The heroine is a beautiful girl from the provinces, married 
to an aristocratic young editor of a liberal journal. Her 
character is drawn with marvellous fidelity. Journalism, 
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and humorous episodes, which form all the deeper contrast 
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PRESS 

“ Sweet and pathetic.” 

“ Full of power, pathos, charm.” 

“ Good, pure fiction.” 

“ Dramatic.” 

“ Potent art.” 

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“ Delightful Spanish creation.” 

“ Wonderful beauty.” 

“ Gift of esprit .” 

“ A sweet picture.” 


“ Rich in pictures of Spanish home 
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“ Realism at its noblest.” 

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SUMMER LEGENDS. 


Translated from the German of Rudolph Baumbach by 
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Rudolph Baumbacli is the most spontaneous and sparkling 
of modern German poets. He has Heine’s wit without a trace 
of his bitterness. 

Baumbach’s prose is as fascinating as his poetry. It is 
limpid, simple, strong, and pure. His “Summer Legends” are 
remarkable for their fancy, which is never trivial; their delicate 
humor, which plays over the foibles of human nature but never 
stings; their quaint poetical flavor, and their adaptability to 
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into simple, unaffected English, they deserve to become as classic 
and popular in America as they are in Germany, where they 
have had a phenomenal success. 


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Homer, and who devour the younger books of history and adventure; boys who 
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*“ Nor is it credible that the original can have lost a scintilla of its wit, a whifl 
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FRIGE, 50 CENTS 


WHAT TO DO 


Count Lyof N. Tolstoi 


A NEW AND UNABRIDGED TRANSLATION 


NEW YORK 

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.13 ASTOR PLACE 




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Crowell’s Illustrated Edition. 


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In view of the present remarkable reawakening of interest 
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LES MISERABLES. 5 Vols. !2mo. 

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Notices of the Press 


“ The first worthy American Edition 

Of 

Victor Hugo's Works” 

— BOSTON GLOBE. 

“ This promises to be by all odds the most satisfactory translation of Hugo's 
great romances with which we are acquainted .”— Literary World. 

“ Victor Hugo has been one of the greatest forces of this century. As Swin¬ 
burne so well says: — ‘His spiritual service has been, in its highest development, 
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